ciously, is now applied to him instead by his whole social environment, and that not capriciously, but with the regularity of a natural law. We thus see that the greatest of all changes that has ever taken place in the conditions of production, has not connoted the very smallest change in the constitution of the human character. To produce the same amount of labour, the same motives and the same force must be applied now as ever; and the only change or improvement that has ever taken place, has not been in the things applied, but merely in the method of the application.

The maintenance of civilisation, then, depends upon two processes, the constant development of the higher forms of labour, and the constant intensification of the lower; and in each case equally the cause that operates is inequality. In the first, it operates by producing a desire for itself in the labourer; in the second it operates by exerting a certain pressure upon him. In the one case it attracts, in the other case it propels. But in both cases, in one way, what it does is the

same. In both cases it endows the labourer with powers which, in its absence, would be wholly wanting in him. In its absence there could be no continued industry, just as in its absence there could be no developed skill. If we would ever scientifically grasp the great social problem, we must never lose sight of this fundamental truth. Man's power of producing more than a livelihood depends upon causes that are without him, and not within him; and these causes consist essentially, and they always have consisted since the earliest dawn of history, in some arrangement, more or less effective, of marked social inequalities.

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CHAPTER X.

INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL PROGRESS.

We have now considered the world's material civilisation under each of its three aspects, its rise, its progress, and its maintenance; and in each case we have found the cause of it to be either the desire for, or else the pressure of, inequality. In the absence of this cause, civilisation has been also absent; with the decline of it, civilisation has declined. With regard then to the future, the deduction is inevitable. Any social changes that tend to abolish inequalities, will tend also to destroy or to diminish our civilisation.

This statement, however, must be taken with certain limitations, or it may else be easily distorted by a perverse or a slovenly thinker. Although where there are no inequalities, there will be no civilised produc

tion, and where there are inequalities there will be civilised production, it is by no means meant that production always increases in exact proportion to the magnitude of the inequalities, or that it need always be diminished. in exact proportion to the diminution of them.. Thus under the old régime in France, as the inequalities became greater, it is notorious that production became less; and conversely, in the same country, as the inequalities have become less, the production has become greater. To any one, however, who has understood the foregoing arguments, this will seem only natural. Inequality influences production not by existing only, but by existing as an object of desire on the one hand, and as a means of pressure on the other. Its power over the skilled labourer depends on the chances he has of achieving it; its power over the unskilled labourer depends on the way in which it can apply pressure to him. Now in the first case, if inequality be too hard to achieve, its influence, as an object of desire, will be almost as little as if it did not exist at

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all; and in the second case, if its pressure be too severe, it may cripple labour in the very act of causing it. Its efficiency, therefore, as the cause of civilised production, will increase with its magnitude only within certain limits. Further, these limits will themselves vary considerably in different cases. They will be different in England from what they are in Ireland; they will be different in China from what they are in the United States. They will differ according to the temperament, the political history, and the occupations, of each separate people. But these differences will be altogether accidental. Precisely the same principle will be found to underlie all of them. Inequality, as it increases, will in every case increase production, until by its magnitude it begins to cause despair or indifference rather than hope in the skilled labourer; and misery and weakness instead of resolve in the unskilled. As soon as it increases beyond this point production will diminish; as soon as it decreases towards this point again, production again will increase. This latter This latter process,