254 WHAT IS LIFE ? 



them. 1 They hear of human wretchedness in the papers, 

 and it is unpleasant, the papers are folded up and put 

 aside. They often do not want to know of the existence 

 of human misery or for a pretence, they patronize some 

 bazaar or concert in which the leaders of Vanity Fair 

 must hold the prominent positions, to create a mere 

 pittance to mitigate human suffering, while at the same 

 time they are in great part the factor in breeding disease 

 and misery. And the dole satisfies ignorance. Thus 

 we are manufacturing human misery and breeding 

 as fast as possible a degenerated population. And 

 the maintenance of this population always presses 

 hardest upon that deserving stratum of population, 

 which exists just above the pauper classes. A class 

 which works hard, very hard, to avoid a premature 

 death or falling into that vortex of misery pauperism. 

 Increased taxation, the concentration of capital, and 

 selling at an unremunerative profit are factors which 

 are destroying this lower middle class. 



We have undertaken to give free education to the 

 starving lower orders, while there is every encourage- 

 ment given for an unlimited development of this 



1 " And it must be remembered .that the universal experience of 

 mankind has been, and is still, that wealth and culture divorced 

 from the control of ethical influences of the kind in question have 

 not sought to find satisfaction in what are called the higher altruistic 

 pleasures, but that they have rather, as evolutionary science would 

 have taught us, sought the satisfaction of those instincts which have 

 their roots deepest in our natures. Voluptuousness and epicureanism 

 in all their most refined and unmentionable forms have everywhere 

 been, and everywhere continue to be, the accompaniments of irre- 

 sponsible wealth and power, the corresponding mental habit being 

 one of cultured contempt for the excluded and envious masses." 

 (" Social Evolution," Benjamin Kidd, 1895, p. 255.) 



