238 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



end being the moral and political welfare of society — ^has become 

 an end unto itself. The prodigious growth of trade, and the 

 enormous increase of social wealth which has ensued from this 

 development, have awakened appetites and stimulated desires. 

 Competition has become fiercer and more bitter. The struggle 

 for existence has intensified tenfold. The desire to gain money, 

 and to gain it quickly, has infected all the members of Western 

 society. The political interests of a nation are identified with 

 its economic interests, and are subservient to the latter. 



We have already noticed that economic disturbances will have 

 a disastrous influence on a society in process of disintegration. 

 And economic disturbances tend precisely to become ever more 

 and more frequent as economic activity increases. This pheno- 

 menon is an inevitable result of the development of credit and 

 speculation, and of constant overproduction. The formation of 

 trusts is not capable of putting an end to this excessive produc- 

 tion. For, as the object of a trust is to endeavour to obtain a 

 monopoly, and to limit the supply with the object of raising the 

 price of goods, other trusts will be persistently formed to com- 

 pete for the conquest of the market. Thus excessive production 

 appears to be a feature inherent to the capitalist system of pro- 

 duction ; and excessive production must necessarily be a con- 

 stant source of economic disaster. 



But if economic disaster has, for reasons already set forth, a 

 detrimental influence on the moral life of society, the same result 

 is produced by a sudden increase of prosperity, power, and 

 fortune. A too rapid increase of social wealth is as unfortimate 

 for the stability of society as bankruptcy would be. And the 

 same reasons which render economic disaster dangerous for social 

 stability likewise render a too rapid increase of prosperity dan- 

 gerous. The conditions of life are suddenly changed. The scale 

 of individual desires has been altered. The boimdaries which, 

 by universal consent, separate the different spheres of society 

 from one another, according to the estimate formed of the value 



