Ok, Kelley. Here's your new quiz. Again, guess the author.
"I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think
that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to
get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on
each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life,
are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the
disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial
progress...[T]he best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is
poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back,
by the efforts of others to push themselves forward...
[T]hose who do not accept the present very early stage of human
improvement as its ultimate type, may be excused for being
comparatively indifferent to the kind of economical progress
which excites the congratulations of ordinary politicians; the
mere increase of production and accumulation....I know not
why it should be matter of congratulation that persons who are
already richer than any one needs to be, should have doubled
their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure
except as representative of wealth; or that numbers of
individuals should pass over, every year, from the middle classes
into a richer class, or from the class of the occupied rich to
that of the unoccupied. It is only in the backward countries of
the world that increased production is still an important object:
in those most advanced, what is economically needed is a better
distribution....Levelling institutions, either of a just
or of an unjust kind, cannot alone accomplish it; they may lower
the heights of society, but they cannot, of themselves,
permanently raise the depths.
On the other hand, we may suppose this better distribution of
property attained, by the joint effect of the prudence and
frugality of individuals, and of a system of legislation
favouring equality of fortunes, so far as is consistent with the
just claim of the individual to the fruits, whether great or
small, of his or her own industry. We may suppose, for instance
(according to the suggestion thrown out in a former chapter), a
limitation of the sum which any one person may acquire by gift or
inheritance, to the amount sufficient to constitute a moderate
independence. Under this twofold influence, society would exhibit
these leading features: a well-paid and affluent body of
labourers; no enormous fortunes, except what were earned and
accumulated during a single lifetime; but a much larger body of
persons than at present, not only exempt from the coarser toils,
but with sufficient leisure, both physical and mental, from
mechanical details, to cultivate freely the graces of life, and
afford examples of them to the classes less favourably
circumstanced for their growth....
It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of
his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated, is a very poor ideal.
Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is
essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and
solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the
cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for
the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is
there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing
left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of
land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food
for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed
up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man's
use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or
superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a
wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a
weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose
that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things
that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would
extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support
a larger, but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely
hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be
stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary
condition of capital and population implies no stationary state
of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for
all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as
much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more
likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased to be
engrossed by the art of getting on. Even the industrial arts
might be as earnestly and as successfully cultivated, with this
sole difference, that instead of serving no purpose but the
increase of wealth, industrial improvements would produce their
legitimate effect, that of abridging labour. Hitherto it is
questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being. They have enabled a
greater population to live the same life of drudgery and
imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and
others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the
middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great
changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in
their futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to just
institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the
deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests
made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of
scientific discoverers, become the common property of the
species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot."
