20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



motive power of all human progress,* and there is no such in- 

 centive for individual exertion as the apprehension of prospect- 

 ive want. " If everybody was content with his situation, or if 

 everybody believed that no improvement of his condition was 

 possible, the state of the world would be that of torpor," or even 

 worse, for society is so constituted that it can not for any length 

 of time remain stationary, and, if it does not continually ad- 

 vance, it is sure to retrograde, f 



It is a matter of regret that those who declaim most loudly 

 against the inequalities in the distribution of wealth, and are 

 ready with schemes for the more "equal division of unequal 

 earnings " as remedies against suffering, are the ones who seem 

 to have the least appreciation of the positive fact, that most of 

 the suffering which the human race endures is the result of 

 causes which are entirely within the province of individual 

 human nature to prevent, and that, therefore, reformation of the 

 individual is something more important than the reformation of 

 society. 



To understand the problem of poverty, as it at present ex- 

 hibits itself, especially with reference to remedial effects, it is ne- 

 cessary to look at it comprehensively from two different stand- 

 points. Viewed from the standi)oint of twenty or twenty-five 

 years ago, or before what may be termed the advent of the " ma- 



* " The incentives of progress are the desires inherent in human nature — the desire to 

 gratify the wants of the animal nature, the wants of the intellectual nature, and the wants 

 of the sympathetic nature — desires that, short of infinity, can never be satisfied, as they 

 grow by what they feed on." — Henry George. 



f The conditions which are naturally imbedded, as it were, in human nature, and 

 which war against the realization of the idea of an ultimate equality in the distribution 

 or possession of capital, have been thus clearly and forcibly pointed out by Mr. George 

 Baden Powell in his "New Homes for the Old Country," published in 1872 after a visit 

 to Australia and New Zealand : " Since the arrival of man in the world there have been 

 perpetual questionings as to why all men are not well off. Why should the good things 

 of this life be so unequally distributed ? The two great causes, one as powerful as the 

 other, are circumstances and talents. But these two opposite causes all through man's life 

 influence each other greatly. Circumstances call forth peculiar talents which might other- 

 wise be uselessly dormant, and talents often take advantage of peculiar circumstances 

 which might otherwise be overlooked and missed. It is by no means improbable that as 

 the world grows wiser some means will be found of considerably raising the lowest stage 

 of existence, but it is entirehj against the nature of things that all should be equal in every 

 way. Innate pride continually urges men to seek that which is above them, and to many 

 happiness in life is the mere gaining of such successive steps. The essential rule is to 

 work one's own circumstances to the highest point attainable by means of the talents pos- 

 sessed. These talents may be said to resolve themselves into various capitals, and a man 

 may have capital for the improvement of his condition in the form of money, brains, or 

 health and strength — in fact, he may thrive by the possession of ' talents,' whether of 

 gold, of the mind, or of the body. With this fully recognized fact of the diversities of 

 capital, it would seem obviously impossible for a people to continue long in the humanli/ 

 imposed possession of equal personal shares in any capital." 



