of excellence, in a fully developed life" is ancient now, but I have
never found a better. From happiness so defined, poverty excludes our
working-classes in the lump, almost without exception. For them an
energy of the soul along the lines of excellence is almost unknown, and
a fully developed life impossible. In both these respects their
condition has probably become worse within the last century. If there is
a word of truth in what historians tell us, a working-man must certainly
have had a better chance of exercising an energy of his soul before the
development of factories and machinery. What energy of the personal soul
is exercised in a mill-hand, a tea-packer, a slop-tailor, or the watcher
of a thread in a machine? How can a man or woman engaged in such labour
for ten hours a day at subsistence wage enjoy a fully developed life? It
seems likely that the old-fashioned workman who made things chiefly with
his own hands and had some opportunity of personal interest in the work,
stood a better chance of the happiness arising from an energy of the
soul. His life was also more fully developed by the variety and interest
of his working material and surroundings. This is the point to which our
prophets who pour their lamentations over advancing civilisation should
direct their main attack, as, indeed, the best of them have done. For
certainly it is an unendurable result if the enormous majority of
civilised mankind are for ever to be debarred from the highest possible
happiness.

The second offspring of poverty in these working regions of our city is
waste. And I have called waste the twin brother of unhappiness because
the two are very much alike. By waste I do not here mean the death-rate
of infants, though that stands at one in four. No one, except an
exploiter of labour, would desire a mere increase in the workpeople's
number without considering the quality of the increase. But by waste I
mean the multitudes of boys and girls who never get a chance of
fulfilling their inborn capacities. The country's greatest shame and
disaster arise from the custom which makes the line between the educated
and the uneducated follow the line between the rich and the poor, almost
without deviation. That a nature capable of high development should be
precluded by poverty from all development is the deepest of personal and
national disasters, though it happen, as it does happen, several
thousand times a year. Physical waste is bad enough