The Progress of the Race 
aremedy? If a being exist whom his des- 
tiny calls most specially, almost organi- 
cally, to live and to organise common life in 
accordance with pure reason, that being is 
man. And yet see what he makes of it; 
compare the mistakes of the hive with those 
of our own society. How should we 
marvel, for instance, were we bees observ- 
ing men, as we noted the unjust, illogical 
distribution of work among a race of crea- 
tures that in other directions appear to 
manifest eminent reason! We should find 
the earth’s surface, unique source of all 
common life, insufficiently, painfully culti- 
vated by two or three tenths of the whole 
population; we should find another tenth 
absolutely idle, usurping the larger share of 
the products of this first labour; and the 
remaining seven-tenths condemned to a life 
of perpetual half-hunger, ceaselessly exhaust- 
ing themselves in strange and sterile efforts 
whereby they never may profit, but only 
render more complex and more inexplicable 
still the life of the idle. We should con- 
clude that the reason and moral sense of 
these beings must belong to a world entirely 
337 Y 
