EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



cumulation." As a rule all men desire to make 

 money, or to increase their general control over 

 the circumstances which make life comfortable 

 or pleasurable ; but the effectiveness of this desire 

 is very different with different individuals, and 

 it is immeasurably more effective in the case of 

 civilized men than in the case of barbarians. 

 The savage cannot be made to work to-day in 

 anticipation of wants that are not actually felt at 

 present ; but the civilized man will even devote 

 a hundred or a thousand dollars' worth of labour 

 every year to ward off the mere possibility of a 

 loss by fire which is by no means likely to occur. 

 This tendency to provide for future contingen- 

 cies is at the root of what is called the " effective 

 desire of accumulation," and it furnishes one of 

 the most conspicuous of all the distinctions be- 

 tween civilized men and savages. The progress 

 of mankind in civilization has been to a large 

 extent identical with the growth of this tendency. 

 But, now, how far has this been an intellectual, 

 and how far a moral progress? On the one 

 hand, it may be argued that the ability to labour 

 and to economize to-day in anticipation of future 

 contingencies is an index of self-control or of 

 power to resist momentary temptations ; and in 

 so far as this is true, the increase of the " effec- 

 tive desire of accumulation " is an index of the 

 degree to which civilized men have risen mor- 

 ally above the dead level of savagery. But, on 



