if we hold up to the higher standard of men, we must have fewer of
them.

Taking men as they have been and are, they are subjects of passion,
emotion, and instinct. Only the _elite_ of the race has yet been
raised to the point where reason and conscience can even curb the
lower motive forces. For the mass of mankind, therefore, the price of
better things is too severe, for that price can be summed up in one
word--self-control. The consequence is, that for all but a few of us
the limit of attainment in life in the best case is to live out our
term, to pay our debts, to place three or four children in a position
to support themselves in a position as good as the father's was, and
there to make the account balance.

Since we must all live, in the civilized organization of society, on
the existing capital; and since those who have only come out even have
not accumulated any of the capital, have no claim to own it, and cannot
leave it to their children; and since those who own land have parted
with their capital for it, which capital has passed back through other
hands into industrial employment, how is a man who has inherited
neither land nor capital to secure a living? He must give his
productive energy to apply capital to land for the further production
of wealth, and he must secure a share in the existing capital by a
contract relation to those who own it.

Undoubtedly the man who possesses capital has a great advantage over
the man who has no capital, in all the struggle for existence. Think of
two men who want to lift a weight, one of whom has a lever, and the
other must apply his hands directly; think of two men tilling the soil,
one of whom uses his hands or a stick, while the other has a horse and
a plough; think of two men in conflict with a wild animal, one of whom
has only a stick or a stone, while the other has a repeating rifle;
think of two men who are sick, one of whom can travel, command medical
skill, get space, light, air, and water, while the other lacks all
these things. This does not mean that one man has an advantage
_against_ the other, but that, when they are rivals in the effort to
get the means of subsistence from Nature, the one who has capital has
immeasurable advantages over the other. If it were not so capital would
not be formed. Capital is only formed by self-denial, and if the
possession of it did not secure advantages and superiorities of a high
order men would never submit to what is n