2 1 8 ARISTOCRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book in impossible, in a case like this, to examine social 

 activity as a whole. Such activity is of various kinds, 

 and each must be dealt with separately. Let us 

 begin, then, with two the activity of economic pro- 

 duction, and the activity which results in the growth 

 and begin with of speculative knowledge. The first affords us the 



economic , ,.. . r . .... . 



progress and clearest illustration ot how to discriminate the pro- 

 knowfedge. duct of the many by considering what it would 

 shrink to were the influence of the few absent. The 

 second affords us the clearest illustration of how to 

 discriminate the product of the many by considering 

 the nature of the faculties which the production of 

 the result implies. 



in the case of To begin with production, then, let us take the 

 progrSs C \ve case of the United Kingdom, and consider the amount 

 meThod P S y the P er h ea d that was annually produced by the popula- 

 inquiring what t j on a nun d re d years ago. This amount was about 



is produced by J 



labour with fi A At the present time it is something: like 



and without ~ . 



the assistance ,35, anc * tne purchasing power ot money has so 

 man. 6 8 increased with the cheapening of commodities, that 

 the excess of the latter sum over the former is far 

 greater than it seems. Now, if we attribute the 

 entire production of this country, at the close of the 

 last century, to common or average labour (which is 

 plainly an absurd concession), we shall gain some 

 idea of what the utmost limits of the independent 

 productivity of the ordinary man are ; for the 

 ordinary man's talents as a producer, when directed 

 by nobody but himself, have, as has been said 

 already, not appreciably increased in the course of 

 two thousand years, and have certainly not increased 



