n of the ways in which individuality or quality of
consumption may or will assert itself, in a society where social
progress is based upon equality of opportunity, and the power to
consume has some just relation to ability and merit. It seems
reasonable to expect that on the whole machinery will retain, and even
strengthen and extend, its hold of those industries engaged in
supplying the primitive needs of man--his food, clothing, shelter, and
other animal comforts. In a genuinely progressive society the object
will be so to order life as to secure, not merely the largest amount
of individual freedom or self-expression, but the highest quality. If
an undue amount of individuality be devoted to the production and
consumption of food, clothing, etc., and the conscious, refined
cultivation of these tastes, higher forms of individual expression in
work and life will be neglected. The just economy of individuality
will therefore relegate certain branches of production to machinery,
in order that the energy saved by such routine-work may be set free
for higher individual endeavour. The satisfaction of the primary
animal wants--hunger, thirst, cold, etc.--are common to all; in these
purely physical demands there is less qualitative difference in
different men; as the needs are the same the consumption will be the
same. The absence of wide individual differences of taste marks out
the commodities for routine or machine-production. As individuals are
nearest alike in their prime physical needs, so, as they gradually
develop higher material wants, and, after these are satisfied,
aesthetic, intellectual, moral wants, their individualism becomes more
and more marked. It is therefore in the most highly developed, or, as
they are sometimes called, the more "artificial" wants of man, that
the diversity of individual nature shows itself most strongly, and
demands a satisfaction peculiar to itself which only art can give. In
a highly evolved society it is likely that many physical needs, and
even some intellectual needs, will be common to all, and will engage
little individual attention. These may be graded as routine wants, and
may be satisfied by machine-made goods. As a society, safely ordered
in the supply of ordinary physical comforts, continued to develop, a
less and less diversity would show itself in the ordinary aspect of
its material civilisation, because the individuality which once found
expression there is raised to a higher