well-understood definition. Discussions are made to bear
upon the assumed rights, wrongs, and misfortunes of certain social
classes; and all public speaking and writing consists, in a large
measure, of the discussion of general plans for meeting the wishes of
classes of people who have not been able to satisfy their own desires.
These classes are sometimes discontented, and sometimes not. Sometimes
they do not know that anything is amiss with them until the "friends of
humanity" come to them with offers of aid. Sometimes they are
discontented and envious. They do not take their achievements as a fair
measure of their rights. They do not blame themselves or their parents
for their lot, as compared with that of other people. Sometimes they
claim that they have a right to everything of which they feel the need
for their happiness on earth. To make such a claim against God and
Nature would, of course, be only to say that we claim a right to live
on earth if we can. But God and Nature have ordained the chances and
conditions of life on earth once for all. The case cannot be reopened.
We cannot get a revision of the laws of human life. We are absolutely
shut up to the need and duty, if we would learn how to live happily, of
investigating the laws of Nature, and deducing the rules of right
living in the world as it is. These are very wearisome and commonplace
tasks. They consist in labor and self-denial repeated over and over
again in learning and doing. When the people whose claims we are
considering are told to apply themselves to these tasks they become
irritated and feel almost insulted. They formulate their claims as
rights against society--that is, against some other men. In their view
they have a right, not only to _pursue_ happiness, but to _get_ it; and
if they fail to get it, they think they have a claim to the aid of
other men--that is, to the labor and self-denial of other men--to get
it for them. They find orators and poets who tell them that they have
grievances, so long as they have unsatisfied desires.

Now, if there are groups of people who have a claim to other people's
labor and self-denial, and if there are other people whose labor and
self-denial are liable to be claimed by the first groups, then there
certainly are "classes," and classes of the oldest and most vicious
type. For a man who can command another man's labor and self-denial for
the support of his own existence is a privileged person of the high