product. That brings me to ask why, unless human nature has
mightily changed in a hundred years, you are not under the same
necessity."

"We are," replied Dr. Leete. "I don't think there has been any
change in human nature in that respect since your day. It is still
so constituted that special incentives in the form of prizes, and
advantages to be gained, are requisite to call out the best
endeavors of the average man in any direction."

"But what inducement," I asked, "can a man have to put
forth his best endeavors when, however much or little he
accomplishes, his income remains the same? High characters
may be moved by devotion to the common welfare under such a
system, but does not the average man tend to rest back on his
oar, reasoning that it is of no use to make a special effort, since
the effort will not increase his income, nor its withholding
diminish it?"

"Does it then really seem to you," answered my companion,
"that human nature is insensible to any motives save fear of
want and love of luxury, that you should expect security and
equality of livelihood to leave them without possible incentives
to effort? Your contemporaries did not really think so, though
they might fancy they did. When it was a question of the
grandest class of efforts, the most absolute self-devotion, they
depended on quite other incentives. Not higher wages, but
honor and the hope of men's gratitude, patriotism and the
inspiration of duty, were the motives which they set before their
soldiers when it was a question of dying for the nation, and