We are fully aware of the immense social danger in the desire for riches; but that is no objection to the desire for bread and clothing and the bare necessities of human life.  And the seemingly materialistic enthusiasm which will gradually transform our semi-bestial civilization is no less poetic or religious than any Eastern aloofness or Tolstoian simplicity.  Poetry is not all rhyming couplets:  religion is not all for the intellectually or artistically incompetent.  So, a world in which twenty per cent. of humanity did not slowly starve to death would not necessarily be less worthy of admiration.  Nor would religion disappear if every one were healthy, unless religion means the result of neurasthenia or dyspepsia or premature ageing.  No doubt there is some exaggeration in this element of the common social ideals.  Not even a poor man lives on bread alone; and it is indeed possible to have a perfectly well-fed society which would be quite barbarous.  But we must regard the fine flower of culture as purchased at too high a price if, for the sake of a few connoisseurs and courtiers not to say bourgeois plutocrats, the majority in every nation must lack a bare human life.  Some declare that the division between nations is more important than that between the rich and the poor.  It may be so; but the only reason must be that what the few have, the many, however dimly, may hope to share or may be induced to think they do share.  Humanity is infinitely gullible.  But in every nation there is rising a murmur which may yet become an articulate cry.

The writers of modern Utopias in their detailed conception of what is desirable may speak only for themselves; but it is a sign of the common enthusiasm that they all attach so much importance to organization and to physical health.  This indicates that we all, in every nation, look forward, however vaguely, to a society in which human life shall be less difficult for the majority to obtain.  We speak sometimes of the redistribution of leisure—­August Bebel made it one of the chief articles of his creed.  But this as an ideal does not indicate any desire that the dock-labourer should have time to loaf in a club, or his wife time to play bridge, except in so far as time to loaf is an opportunity for some other employment than the mere struggle for food.  There is nothing inevitable in a situation which makes the development of most of the human faculties a privilege of a few and an impossibility for the greater number.  Nor is it correct to suppose that the half-starved and the ill-clothed should be satisfied with being ‘virtuous’, and leave it to others, possibly wicked and certainly far from simple, to cultivate art and science.

Nor again is it absurd to hope for a world in which all should have at least the opportunity for the development of any faculties they may possess.  The social gain would be immense.  It would be like the change from a harmony which is produced by a few amateurs to one of a full orchestra.