 is singular how ethical
standards change.« The doctor said this with such a twinkle in his eye that I
was obliged to laugh.
    »I suppose,« I said, »that the real reason that we rewarded men for their
endowments, while we considered those of horses and goats merely as fixing the
service to be severally required of them, was that the animals, not being
reasoning beings, naturally did the best they could, whereas men could only be
induced to do so by rewarding them according to the amount of their 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 never was there an age of the
world when those motives did not call out what is best and noblest in men. And
not only this, but when you come to analyze the love of money which was the
general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of want and
desire of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money
represented;
