ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 127 



fairly directed. The difficult}' is entirely that of securing for them 

 the opportunity for free action. The power, for example, to pro- 

 duce a large quantity of a useful commodity may exist, but the con- 

 ditions be wanting for placing the product in the hands of those 

 who want it. This checks the production without affecting the pro- 

 ducing power. That lies latent, and such latent power is simply 

 wasted. Nor is it altogether a discrepancy between production and 

 distribution. The power to distribute exists as well as the power to 

 produce, but the conditions are wanting which are necessary to call 

 that power into exercise. And this is the actual industrial state of 

 society. 



What is true of art is true of science. Intelligence, far more than 

 necessity, is the mother of invention, and the influence of knowl- 

 edge as a social factor, like that of wealth, is proportional to the 

 extent of its. distribution. 



Society has always presented to the thoughtful student two great 

 inequalities as the adequate explanation of nearly all its evils — in- 

 equality of knowledge and inequality of possession. Moral progress, 

 in so far as it has taken place at all, has consisted in the slight diminu- 

 tion of one or both of these inequalities. This is always accomplished 

 by the adoption of a better system of distribution. These two com- 

 modities, information and possession, differ in the essential particu- 

 lar that the latter is and the former is not destroyed in consumption. 

 The existence of a supply of knowledge for distribution is therefore 

 proved by the very fact of its inequality. But there is a sense in 

 which the supply of wealth for distribution is also practically unlim- 

 ited. Production never ceases from having reached a limit to the 

 power to produce. It always ceases from having exceeded the 

 power of the community to consume. But the limit of consump- 

 tion is in turn never that of the desire to consume ; it is always that 

 of the power to obtain. The power of both production and con- 

 sumption is limited only by that of distribution — not the mechan- 

 ical means of distribution, for these, too, are unlimited, but the 

 conditions to the performance of the sociological function of dis- 

 tribution. Could the distribution of knowledge and of physical 

 necessities go on at a rate at all proportional to their possible crea- 

 tion, the moral progress of society, /. e., the increase in its aggregate 

 well-being or enjoyment, would not only be as rapid, but would 

 also be as uniform and steady as its material progress. If the knowl- 

 edge now in possession of the few were in the possession of all, its 



