The more educated socialists of to-day, having gradually come to perceive that labour itself produces but a fraction of this wealth only, have had to alter the form of their promise, but they still adhere to its substance; and the altered form of the promise does but bring out more clearly the fact that they appeal to the desire of personal gain as the primary economic motive of the great majority of mankind.

For, whereas the earlier socialists contented themselves with promising the labourer the whole of what he produced, and promising it on the ground that he had himself produced it, what the labourer is promised by the intellectual socialists of to-day is not only all that he has produced--which in most cases he gets already[14]--but a great deal more besides, which is admittedly produced by others.
We thus see that, according to these theorists, the kind of moral conversion which is to make socialism practicable is to be rigidly confined to one particular class; for, on the part of the majority, no change at all is required in order to make the socialistic evangel welcome.

So far as they are concerned, the Old Adam is quite sufficient.
None of us need much converting in order to welcome the prospect of an indefinite addition to our incomes, which will cost us nothing but the trouble of stretching out our hands to take it.

Socialists often complain that, under the existing dispensation, there is one law for the rich and another law for the poor.

They propose themselves to introduce a difference which goes still deeper, and to provide the few and the many, not only with two laws, but with two different natures, and two antithetic moralities.