SOCIALISTS ON INVESTMENT 319 



man and his family singly. For the life and the Book iv 

 ambitions of a family are not self-contained. They 

 imply and depend upon relations with other families ; 

 and these other families will be valued, and inter- 

 course with them will be rendered possible, not by the Moreover, if 

 bare fact that they are the possessors of so much 

 money, but by the fact that they have the habits and p 

 interests which result, and result only, in the social of those social 



J results, such as 



atmosphere created by a number of assured incomes, continuous 



i 1, i r 1-1 i 1 culture, etc., 



wholly independent or any daily struggle to make which make it 

 them. It is easy to see that no rich society would be " s 

 endurable if the only men in it were men who had 

 just made their fortunes, and if, on their deaths, their 

 families disappeared from it in the gulfs of destitu- 

 tion. Anything more exquisitely ludicrous than the 

 socialistic proposal that great wealth-producers should 

 be allowed large incomes to spend, but that they must 

 not on any account be allowed to invest any part 

 of them, or use it in a way by which more income 

 may result from it anything more ludicrous than 

 this it is not possible to conceive. It is to recur 

 to an illustration used already like proposing that 

 a peasant who is more industrious than his neigh- 

 bours shall be allowed all the money which the sale 

 of his extra produce brings him, provided only that The wealth 

 he spends it on brandy, or beer, or absinthe; but 

 that if he save it up and buys a useful horse with 

 it, his purchase shall be confiscated by the State, P roduce a 



* society of 



because a horse is productive capital. This pro- beasts - 

 posal, however, is not only ludicrous in theory, but 

 it would, if put into practice, result in a sort of 



