This is the assertion of the socialists when reduced to a precise form; and what we have to do is to inquire whether this assertion is true.

Does human nature, as history, as psychology, and as physiology reveal it to us, give us any grounds, in fact, for taking such an assertion seriously?
Any one who has studied human conduct historically, who has observed it in the life around him, and examined scientifically the diversities of temperament and motive that go with diversities of capacity, will dismiss such an assertion as at once groundless and ludicrous.
Let us, to go into detail, take the case of the artist.

What reason is there to suppose that the impassioned emotion which stimulates the adoring monk to lavish all his genius on an altar-piece will stimulate another man to devise, and to organise the production of, some new kind of liquid enamel for the decoration of cheap furniture ?[13] Or let us turn to an impulse closely allied to the artistic--namely, the desire for speculative truth, as manifested in the lives of scientific and philosophic thinkers.

These men--such as Kant and Hegel, for example--have been proverbially, and often ludicrously, indifferent to the material details of their existence.

Who can suppose that the disinterested passion for truth, which had the effect of making these men forget their dinners, will stimulate others to devote themselves to the improvement of stoves and saucepans?
Yet again, let us consider the area of the industrial influence of the motives originating in religious fervour or benevolence.