EQUALITY AND GENERAL PROGRESS 353 



ness to the vast majority of those amongst whom Book iv 

 social progress takes place ; which, the critic will go 

 on to say, is absurd. 



Now even if the conclusions we are discussing 

 did involve in reality all those consequences which 

 would be so depressing to the majority of mankind, 

 yet to prove the conclusions depressing would not 

 be to prove them false ; and few enthusiasts will 

 deny that the object of sociological inquiry is not 

 to reach conclusions which are inspiriting, but to 

 reach conclusions which are true. As a matter of 

 fact, however, the conclusions now in question have 

 by no means that depressing tendency which the 

 radical and the socialist will impute to them. 



For, in the first place, none of the arguments NOW the first 

 contained in the present work have been invoked fs^haTtne 

 to prove, or have any tendency to prove, that the 

 many, as distinct from the few, in any progressive 



country, may not reasonably look forward to a not prevent 



. ' . ... , . . the conditions 



continuous improvement in their condition to aofaii 

 greater command of the comforts and luxuries of 

 life, together with a lightening or a lessening of the 

 labour necessary to procure them. On the con- 

 trary, the majority may look forward to an improve- 

 ment in their circumstances which it is as impossible 

 for us to imagine distinctly at the present time as 

 it would have been for our grandfathers to imagine 

 the telephone or the phonograph. All that has 

 been urged in this work is as follows : That 

 whatever may be the new advantages which the 

 majority of mankind attain, they will attain them 



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