2 40 ARISTO CRA C Y AND E VOL UTION 



Book in all to do. They represent the uncontrolled prompt- 

 ings of the individual's own nature, and they affect 

 production, and dictate to the producers what they 

 shall produce, because they represent a spontaneous 

 similarity of taste amongst a multitude of individuals 

 living under similar circumstances. Here we have 

 the reconciliation of the seemingly contradictory facts, 

 that the power of the many over production is at 

 once paramount and small. 



Thus, though Economic demand, though it owes most of its 

 development to the few, is yet, when its develop- 



mic demand ment: nas taken place, fundamentally democratic 

 is purely [ n j ts na ture. But, on the other hand, economic 



democratic. 



supply, which not only ministers to existing wants, 

 but elicits new ones, tends ever more and more as 

 civilisation advances to depend on the action of the 

 few. For as wants increase there is required, in 

 order to satisfy them, a growing elaboration in the 

 methods and organisation of supply ; and in pro- 

 portion as supply becomes more and more elabor- 

 ately organised, it becomes, from the necessities of 

 the case, less and less democratic. In the Middle 

 Ages, for instance, the only rich supplying class 

 consisted of merchants, because the exchange of 

 commodities, and the bringing them in the required 

 quantities to the proper markets, was a process 

 more complicated than the orginal processes of 

 producing them. Production has now become quite 

 as complicated as commerce ; and a manufacturing 

 aristocracy has developed itself equal in wealth to 

 the commercial. 



