Sec.5. The Entrepreneur.  There remains, however, an aspect of the problem which is perhaps more important than those discussed above.  It is probable that risks would be estimated and undertaken more wisely or less wisely under a different system of society or of industrial organization?  Upon this issue, methods of precise analysis are out of place, but we may have something to learn from the emphatic testimony of tradition.  It has become an axiom of business men that, while Governments can manage with more or less competence a safe and routine business like a Postal Service, their success would be unlikely to prove conspicuous in undertakings where the element of risk is great.  There, it is said, we owe everything in the past to the enterprise of individual men (for even joint-stock companies have not been notable as pioneers) adventuring their own fortunes in accordance with their own unfettered judgment.  This contention, however much we may desire to qualify it, has unquestionably a large measure of truth, and the explanation is not difficult to discover.  For the wise taking of risks in industrial development of an experimental character, peculiar conditions and special qualities are required.  First, it is necessary to envisage distinctly the promising though risky opportunity, and this calls not infrequently for imagination of a none too common order.  Then it must be studied with insight and expert knowledge and weighed by processes which are as much intuitive as intellectual.  The reasons for or against taking a particular business risk are seldom such as can adequately be expressed in terms of arithmetic, or even by clear arguments the soundness of which is proportioned to their logical cogency.  The mysterious faculty of judgment enters in; and from mental processes which defy analysis there emerge ultimately conviction and the will to act.  But it is precisely here that Government Departments are apt to fail.  It is here that the individual, who need consult no one but himself, has a pull over any form of organization, where decisions are reached by the method of debate and agreement among a heterogeneous committee.  Hence it is that we have come to regard exceptional risk-taking as the peculiar province of individual enterprise.  It is probable that these deficiencies of corporate organization are tending to diminish, and it is an interesting question how far it may be found possible to eliminate them in the future.

Meanwhile the above considerations have an important bearing on the rewards which can often be obtained from risky enterprises.  The number of individuals who are in a position to envisage a business opportunity, and to assess with some confidence the chances of success and failure is very limited.  Not only must they possess special knowledge, ability, imagination, confidence in their own judgment, and the capacity to act on it; they must also have at their disposal considerable financial resources.  To combine all these advantages