scale of humanity, has never yet been
found destitute of the power of improvement. Everywhere and at all times
he has made some use of this power. The varying degrees in which the
faculty is used cannot be ascribed to differences in original capacity.
These are evidently connected with social development. A survey of
history shows diversities in improvement, halts, and retrogression; and
the law which will explain all these is that men tend to progress just
as they come closer together, and by co-operation with each other,
increase the mental power that may be devoted to improvement.

But just as conflict is provoked, or association develops inequality of
condition and power, this tendency to progression is lessened, checked,
and finally reversed. As society develops there arise tendencies which
check development. The process of integration, of the specialisation of
functions and powers, is accompanied by a constant liability to
inequality, and to lodge collective power and wealth in the hands of a
few, which tends to produce greater inequality, since aggression grows
on what it feeds.

The reform I have proposed accords with all that is politically,
socially, or morally desirable. It has the qualities of a true reform,
for it will make all other reforms easier.

Behind the problems of social life lies the problem of individual life.
Properly understood, the laws which govern the production and
distribution of wealth show that the want and injustice of the present
social state are not necessary, but that, on the contrary, a social
state is possible in which poverty is unknown, and all the better
qualities and higher powers of human nature would have opportunity for
full development. Further than this, when we see that social development
is governed neither by a special providence, nor by a merciless fate,
but by law at once unchangeable and beneficent, a flood of light breaks
in upon the problem of individual life. If we look merely at individual
life we cannot see that the laws of the universe have the slightest
relation to good or bad, to right or wrong, to just or unjust. By a
fundamental law of our minds we cannot conceive of a means without an
end. But unless man himself may rise to, or bring forth something
higher, his existence is unintelligible. For it is as certain that the
race must die as it is that the individual must die. What, then, is the
meaning of life absolutely and inevitably bounded by death? To me