r
severe penalties, and what we should really hope is that they may be in
some way absorbed by judicious medical treatment, instead of extirpated
by the knife. At the other end of the scale, we have the parasitic
class of the beggars or thieves. They, too, are not personally
responsible for the conditions into which they are born. But they are
not only to be pitied individually, but to be regarded, in the mass, as
involving social disease and danger. More words upon that topic are
quite superfluous, but I may just recall the truth that the two evils
are directly connected. We hear it often said, and often denied, that
the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer. So far, however, as it
is true, it is one version of the very obvious fact that where there
are many careless rich people, there will be the best chance for the
beggars. The thoughtless expenditure of the rich without due
responsibilities, provides the steady stream of so-called charity,--the
charity which, as Shakespeare (or somebody else) observes, is twice
cursed, which curses him that gives and him that receives; which is to
the rich man as a mere drug to still his conscience and offer a
spurious receipt in full for his neglect of social duties, and to the
poor man an encouragement to live without self-respect, without
providence, a mere hanger-on and dead-weight upon society, and a
standing injury and source of temptation to his honest neighbours.

Briefly, a wholesome social condition implies that every social organ
discharges a useful function; it renders some service to the community
which is equivalent to the support which it derives; brain and stomach
each get their due share of supply; and there is a thorough reciprocity
between all the different members of the body. But what kind of
equality should be desired in order to secure this desirable organic
balance? We have to do, I may remark, with the case of a homogeneous
race. By this I mean not only that there is no reason to suppose that
there is any difference between the innate qualities of rich and poor,
but that there is the strongest reason for believing in an equality;
that is to say, more definitely, that if you took a thousand poor
babies and a thousand rich babies, and subjected them to the same
conditions, they would show great individual differences, but no
difference traceable to the mere difference of class origin. I
therefore may leave aside such problems as might arise in the Southe