But it lies with the trout to determine whether or no he will rise to them.

It is a question, not of what the fishermen think, but of what the trout thinks; and the fishermen's thoughts are effective only when they coincide with the trout's.
So long, then, as society desires to get the best work out of its citizens, and so long as some men are, in the words of "X," "immensely and incalculably" more efficient than the great mass of their fellows, and so long as their efficiency requires, as "X" admits that it does, some exceptional reward to induce these men to develop it, these men themselves, in virtue of their inherent characters, must primarily determine what the reward shall be; and not all the majorities in the world, however unanimous, could make a reward sufficient if the particular minority in question did not feel it to be so.

The majority might, by making a sufficient reward unattainable, easily prevent the services from being rendered at all; but, unless they are to forgo the services, the majority can only obtain them on terms which will, in the last resort, depend on the men who are to render them.
Now, in what I have been urging thus far--which practically comes to this, that the sovereignty popularly ascribed to democratic majorities is an illusion--not socialists only, but other advocates of popular government also, will alike be against me, as the promulgator of some blasphemous paradox.

It will be easy, however, to show them that their objections are quite mistaken, and that the exceptional powers of dictation which have just been ascribed to a minority are so far from being inconsistent with the real powers of the majority that the latter, when properly understood, are seen to be their complement and their counterpart.

For, though socialists and thinkers like "X" ascribe to majorities powers which they do _not_ possess, we shall find that majorities do actually possess others, in some ways very much greater, of which such thinkers have thus far taken no cognisance at all.