terpret what
ought to be by considerations of what, as the result of such and such
arrangements, will be.

To sum up, then, the conclusions which we have reached thus far--if we
confine our attention to those recipients of interest who have
themselves produced the capital from which the interest is derived, and
compare such incomes with those which renew themselves only as the
result of continued effort, it is absolutely impossible, on any general
theory of justice, to sanction the latter as earned, and condemn the
former as unearned. If, on the other hand, we turn to those whose
incomes consist of interest on capital produced by, and inherited from,
their fathers, and if we argue that here at all events we come to a
class of interest on which its living recipients can have no justifiable
claim, since we start with admitting that it originates in the efforts
of the dead, our argument, though plausible in its premises, is
stultified by its logical consequence; since the same principle on which
we are urged as a sacred duty to take the income in question away from
its present possessors, would forbid our allowing it to pass into the
possession of anybody else. In short, if continued daily labour, or else
the exercise of invention, or some other form of ability, at some period
of their lives by persons actually living, constitutes in justice the
sole right to possession, the human race as a whole has no right to
profit by any productive effort on the part of past generations; but
each generation ought, so far as is practicable, to start afresh in the
position of naked savages. The fact that nobody would maintain a
fantastic proposition like this is sufficient to show that, on the tacit
admission of everybody, it is impossible to attack interest by insisting
on any abstract distinction between incomes that are earned and
unearned, and treating the latter as felonious, while holding the former
sacred. It is equally true, however, that on such grounds alone it is no
less impossible to defend interest than to attack it; and here we arrive
at what is the real truth of the matter--namely, that in cases like the
present the principles of ideal justice do not, indeed, give us false
guidance, but give us no guidance at all, unless we take them in
connection with the concrete facts of society, and estimate social
arrangements as being either right or wrong by reference to the
practical consequences which do, or which would result fr