The more logically and ingeniously men reason from premises, of which the one most essential to their conclusions is radically false to fact, the more punctually on every critical occasion is this fallacy bound to reassert itself as the logical basis of that which they desire to prove.
The question, however, still remains to be answered of why a large body of men, like the educated apostles of socialism, who exhibit as a class no typical inferiority of intellect, unite in accepting, as though drawn to it by some chemical affinity, one particular error which dispassionate common-sense disdains, and which the actual history of the whole human race refutes?
In the case of some preachers of socialism the answer lies on the surface.

Socialism is of all creeds that which it is easiest to present to the ignorant; and in these days, like "patriotism" in the days of Dr.Johnson, it is often "the last refuge of a scoundrel," or of a desperate and ambitious fool.

But I here put such cases altogether aside.

What I here have in view are men who are morally and intellectually honest, and many of whom, indeed, are intellectually above the average.

How is the affinity for one common error, and the passionate promulgation of it in forms, many of which are conflicting, to be accounted for in the case of men like these?
The answer to this is to be found, not in their intellect, but in their temperament.