2 3 8 A R IS TO CRA CY AND E VOL UTION 



Book in claim our attention will, when they are first stated, 

 wear an appearance of paradox ; for though the 

 power of democracy, in the advanced processes of 

 production, is smaller than it is in any other kind 

 of social activity, abstract thought and discovery 

 alone excepted, yet it exercises an influence on 

 production none the less, which is as purely 

 democratic in character and as far-reaching in its 

 consequences as that which it has ever exercised 

 over the doctrines of any religion, 

 yet it is the For what is the object of production ? It is the 



wants and . r . r1 i i i i 



tastes of the satisfaction ot human wants, which begin as needs, 

 and gradually develop into tastes. The multiplica- 

 tion of these needs, together with the satisfaction 

 of them, is what civilisation means ; and though 

 material wealth may increase, as it does in many 

 new countries, without any concurrent development 

 of civilisation in its higher forms, civilisation in its 

 higher forms cannot increase, and certainly cannot 

 diffuse itself throughout the community at large, 

 without a development in the means of material 

 production. Books, for example, though they are 

 vehicles of mental culture, are themselves economic 

 commodities, and depend for their accessibility to 

 the public on the same kind of industrial agencies as 

 do cotton, sugar, tobacco, and that comforter of the 

 nations alcohol. Refinement of taste and feeling, 

 again, is largely diffused by pictures ; but the ac- 

 cessibility of any great picture to the vast majority 

 of any nation depends on the industrial processes by 

 which it can be cheaply and faithfully reproduced 



