What these motives are has been sufficiently shown already in language borrowed from the socialistic writers themselves—the pleasure of “excelling,” the “joy in creative work,” the pleasure of doing good to others, and, lastly, the enjoyment of the approbation of others, or of the yet more flattering tribute commonly called “honour.” Now these motives, it will be seen, are of two distinct kinds, the first three {293} being based exclusively on some pleasurable condition of mind, which is independent of anybody except the individual who actually experiences it; the two last being based on a pleasurable condition of mind, which is directly dependent on the actions or the attitude of other people. We may therefore reduce these motives to two—namely, self-realisation, in the first place, and recognition by others, in the second. This classification will be not only shorter, but more comprehensive than the other; for self-realisation will include not only the joys of self-improvement and artistic creation, but those of the pursuit of truth and the performance of religious duty, and will distinguish the pleasure of doing good to others from the pleasure of being thanked or praised for it.
And now let us consider what those kinds of exceptional activity are, in the production of which one or other of these motives, or both of them, have played, hitherto, any considerable part. We shall find them to be as follows: heroic conduct in battle, or in the face of any exceptional danger; artistic creation; the pursuit of speculative truth; what theologians call works of mercy; and, lastly, the propagation of religion. This list, if understood in its full sense, is exhaustive.
Now of these five kinds of action we may dismiss the last from our consideration, not because it has not a most important influence on civilisation, but because it has no direct connection with any of the processes of wealth-production, except in so far as it {294} tends to divert men’s attention from them. And with regard to the works of mercy something similar must be said also; for though they undoubtedly have a close connection with wealth, they do not aid at its production, still less at its increase, but merely at the distribution of portions of it, which have been produced already, amongst persons whom it would otherwise not reach. The love for others, for example, by which works of mercy are motived, may prompt a man to send London children for a holiday into the country by train, but it would never have prompted him to invent the locomotive engine. It may prompt him to secure for a youth an education in modern science, but it would never have prompted him to write the treatises of Professor Huxley. All activity of this kind, then, whatever form it may take, is, in a sociological sense, essentially parasitic. It implies the previous exercise of another set of faculties totally distinct from those directly implied in itself, and, together with other faculties, other motives belonging to them. It has, then, with the actual process of wealth-production as little to do as has religious propagandism itself; and, like religious propagandism, we may dismiss it from our consideration here. The only forms of activity with which we are called on to deal with here will thus be artistic creation, the pursuit of speculative truth, and military or quasi-military feats of heroism.
As to artistic creation, it is, no doubt, perfectly true, as is proved by the efforts of countless devoted amateurs, that men with artistic powers will {295} often do their utmost to develop them, merely for the sake of the pleasure which the exercise of these powers brings with it; whilst literature is even more obviously than painting cultivated by men who devote themselves to it solely as a means of self-expression. Indeed, it might reasonably be contended that finer books and paintings would be produced if it were impossible for painters and writers to make money by producing them, than are now produced with a view to captivating the public purchaser.
So, too, the pursuit of scientific and philosophic truth—arduous though it is—is generally undertaken by men whose principal motive is the pleasure their work brings them.
A watcher of the skies,
When some new planet swims into his ken,
may well be supposed to find in that thrilling moment a reward sufficient to compensate him for all his pains in arriving at it; and most branches of science would yield us similar illustrations. Indeed, the career characteristic of scientists and philosophers generally is a conclusive proof that the principal motive of their activity is not the desire of any extrinsic reward, the amount of which they will balance against the amount or the quality of their efforts, but a passion for truth as truth, which they indulge in for its own sake only.
Now granting all this, what will its bearing be on the question of whether the pleasures of pure self-realisation will suffice to stimulate those {296} exceptional faculties whose function it is to maintain and increase the production of wealth? With regard to artistic creation, we are certainly bound to admit that great works of art are wealth of a highly important kind, and when a good picture is produced, as it often is, solely in obedience to the painter’s artistic impulse, we have a genuine example of wealth produced in obedience to that kind of motive whose efficiency the socialists desire to establish. Further, with regard to the pursuit of truth, as Mill points out in a passage that has been already quoted, progress in speculative knowledge is the basis of all other progress, and notably of progress in the arts and processes of wealth-production. It must, accordingly, be admitted that in a certain sense all progress in wealth-production has for its basis a kind of disinterested activity with which the desire of possessing wealth has nothing at all to do. And yet in spite of this, neither the case of the artist nor of the philosopher warrants the inference that the motives which are sufficient for them will ever have a similar effect on the faculties of the great wealth-producers. The evidence, in fact, as soon as we have fully examined it, will be found to point in a direction precisely opposite.
For, to begin with the case of the artist, it must be remembered, in the first place, that works of art, such as pictures painted by the artist’s hand, form a very small, though an important part of wealth, and that they are hardly wealth at all from the {297} point of view of the many, unless they are reproduced and multiplied by adequate mechanical processes. Now, though it is quite conceivable that a painter might paint a Madonna solely because the realisation of his own ideas delighted him, it is hardly to be expected that other men will rack their brains to devise blocks, presses, and preparations by which copies of it may be made and multiplied, solely for the pleasure of reproducing ideas which are not their own. It must further be added that delight in creation for its own sake can be attributed as a sufficient motive to the highest class of artists only. As for the men whose artistic powers are true, but qualify them only for decorative not for creative work—the men, for example, who design beautiful stuffs and furniture—though the exercise of their power may be doubtless itself a pleasure to them, they are certainly as a class not given to exercising them without the expectation of some proportionate pecuniary reward. Indeed, in exact proportion as artistic creation assimilates itself to the processes by which wealth in general is produced, the mere pleasure of the work itself ceases to be a sufficient motive for it.