The most impressive things accomplished by human nature have been due to them.

But let us consider what these things are.

The first motive--namely, that supplied by the mere "pleasure in excelling"-- we need hardly consider by itself, for, in so far as socialists can look upon its objects as legitimate, it is included in the struggle for approbation or honour.

We will merely remark that the emphasis which the socialists lay on it is not very consonant with the principles of those persons who propose to abolish competition as the root of all social evils; and we will content ourselves with examining in detail the three other motives only, and the scope of their efficiency, as actual experience reveals it to us.
We shall find that the activities which these three motives stimulate are confined, so far as experience is able to teach us anything, to the following well-marked kinds, which have been already indicated: those of the artist, of the speculative thinker, of the religious and philanthropic enthusiast, and, lastly, those of the soldier.

This list, if understood in its full sense, is exhaustive.
Such being the case, then, the argument of the socialists is as follows: Because a Fra Angelico will paint a Christ or a Virgin, because a Kant will immolate all his years to philosophy, because a monk and a sister of mercy will devote themselves to the victims of pestilence, because a soldier in action will eagerly face death--all without hope of any exceptional pecuniary reward--the monopolists of business ability, if only such rewards are made impossible for them, will at once become amenable to the motives of the soldier, the artist, the philosopher, the inspired philanthropist, and the saint.