490 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



under the influences of civilisation, in the lands most 

 brightened by its sunlight, yet to the vast majority civilisa- 

 tion, and the education which it now rightly gives, have 

 brought intelligence and aspiration, and, in a more or less 

 degree, refinement of thought and feeling. It is not with 

 the multitude as it was in ancient times, as it is in the 

 eastern lands to which I have referred, where there are two 

 widely separated classes — an upper class, enormously rich, 

 and a lower class of most inferior condition. Degraded 

 labour seeks no progress, and but serves the purposes of an 

 employing class. Winwood Reade, speaking of Greece, and 

 referring to the fact that half its inhabitants were slaves, says — 

 " The upper part of the Greek body grew, the lower part 

 remained in a base and brutal state discharging the offices of 

 life, but without beauty and without strength. The face was 

 that of Hyperion, the legs were frightful and hideous, as 

 those of a Satyr." And now it is not only those who have 

 the sharp struggle for existence, but the hundreds of 

 thousands who are enabled to command but in a very small 

 degree the refinements of life which fall to others, and feel 

 keenly, in a civilised land, the absence of that higher civilisa- 

 tion which elevates life and betters its condition, who are 

 seeking and searching everywhere for means of amelioration ; 

 and in the desire to set on foot reform have arisen those who 

 advocate socialistic theories, which would make the State the 

 possessor of all means of production, abrogate property, and 

 destroy the individuality which is the soul of aspiration and 

 achievement, the individuaUsm which has been the main- 

 spring of the grand result of progress. These ideas are cur- 

 rent among large numbers of the population of every 

 country to a far greater extent than most men will admit, 

 and deficiencies of civilisation, or the deficiencies of thought 

 and action, no less than the discontents which prevail, 

 threaten the upheaval of society in many lands. 



The true indictment against society in older countries is the 

 mental inertia, the soulless indifference, which characterise the 

 majority of large and influential sections of the community — 

 the possessors of wealth, the votaries of pleasure and fashion; 

 the politicians, whose sole policy is that of laissez-faire, 

 whose only principle of action is the expediency of the pass- 

 ing hour ; the general disregard of the necessity in the cause 

 of humanity, in the interests of government, of peace, and 

 freedom for action of some kind, the best available, as the one 

 paramount consideration. Is it possible for economic science 



