THE EVOLUTION OF HIGH WAGES. 755 



and clothing — that is to say, the necessaries and comforts of material 

 existence. In the fact that the wages or earnings have risen while 

 prices have fallen, and that those who do the physical work of produc- 

 tion have secured decade by decade an increasing share of a con- 

 stantly increasing product by the expenditure of their earnings when 

 converted into terms of money, is to be found the disproof of the 

 Malthusian theory so far as it may be disproved in a single century. 

 In these facts is also to be found the necessity for the metaphysical 

 treatment of the theory of evolution as yet only partially developed 

 by Darwin, Wallace, and their successors. 



One may even venture to cite the singular vagaries of Wallace 

 in the matter of spiritualism in evidence of a lack of the faculty of 

 observation in metaphysics on the part of a man who has been so 

 eminent in his observations of purely physical conditions. May not 

 Darwin's loss of enjoyment in music and art after his long applica- 

 tion to the observations of Nature possibly indicate a tendency to one- 

 sided development even in the mind of a man so supremely able? 

 Men of far less ability often realize the loss in their power of enjoy- 

 ment of the functions of the ideal after overmuch devotion to the 

 study of material conditions. This is one of the dangers in dealing 

 with statistics, yet the imagination is an absolutely necessary factor 

 in statistical science. The mere compiler of figures, without compre- 

 hension of the subjects of which they are symbols and without capa- 

 city to read between the columns, is a mere drudge whose work 

 always needs to be revised and often changed in the relation of all 

 its parts, lest false impressions should be derived from figures which 

 are themselves true. The statistics of a nation are but the trial bal- 

 ance of its accounts, corresponding to the balance sheet of a mer- 

 chant. Nations may be betrayed by bad bookkeeping, as merchants 

 often are. 



It is also a matter of common observation that the man who de- 

 votes himself exclusively to the accumulation of wealth loses the 

 very power of enjoyment which might ensue from its possession had 

 he rightly comprehended his own function in the universe. 



The mathematics and statistics of the astronomer disclose the 

 order and unity which prevail throughout the universe. Universe 

 itself is a synonym for unity. In my own mind it seems possible to 

 predicate order and unity in the progress of mankind in material 

 welfare on the simple ground that man is a part of the universe. The 

 same creative mind or power by which the world is kept upon its 

 way from an unknown beginning to an equally unknown ending (if 

 there can be beginning or end in an eternal order) directs all the 

 forces of creation of which mankind is a part. It seems to me that 

 the man who comprehends that he himself is a unit and a factor 



