CHAPTER XXVIII 



TRUE INDIVIDUALISM THE ESSENTIAL PRELIMINARY OF A 

 REAL SOCIAL ADVANCE 



Now that we have entered the last year of this our 

 Nineteenth Century, in many respects the most eventful 

 century for good and evil the world has witnessed, most 

 thinking men are looking forward with anxious hope as to 

 what of real good the Twentieth Century may have in 

 store for humanity. Any words of hopeful guidance as to 

 how we may help to bring about such good ; any indication 

 of the true path to such social regeneration a?s may not 

 only enable the middle classes to reach a still higher pitch 

 of refinement, but may raise up the masses from the 

 deadly slough of want, misery, starvation and crime in 

 which so many millions are now floundering, often from no 

 fault of their own and in the midst of the most wealthy 

 and most civilized countries in the world, will certainly 

 be welcome to the humane and thoughtful in all modern 

 societies. 



It is clear, that if we wish to do any real good, we must 

 cease to deal in generalities, or to suggest mere palliatives. 

 We must seek for the fundamental error in our social 

 system which has led to the damning result, that, in the 

 latter half of the nineteenth century there has been a far 

 greater mass of human misery arising directly from want 

 and an equal, perhaps greater, amount in proportion to 

 population than in the preceding century. This is 

 clearly indicated by the figures given by the statistician 

 Mulhall in 1883, in a paper read at the British Association, 



