" As an example how to distinguish between those traits of human
character which are available for scientific purposes, and those which are
not, Mr. Mallock instances a mob, which temporarily acts together for some
given purpose: the individual differences of character then "cancel out,"
and only points of agreement are left. Proceeding to the sixth chapter, he
applies himself to setting to rest the scruples of those who find
something cynical in the idea that the desire for Inequality is compatible
with a respectable form of human character. It is true, he says, that man
does not live by bread alone; but he denies that he means to say "that all
human activity is motived by the desire for inequality"; he would assert
that only "of all productive labor, except the lowest." The only actions
independent of the desire for inequality, however, are those performed in
the name of art, science, philanthropy, and religion; and even in these
cases, so far as the actions are not motived by a desire for inequality,
they are not of productive use; and _vice versa_. In the remaining
chapters, which we must dismiss briefly, we meet with such statements as
"labor has been produced by an artificial creation of want of food, and by
then supplying the want on certain conditions"; that "civilization has
always been begun by an oppressive minority"; that "progress depends on
certain gifted individuals," and therefore social equality would destroy
progress; that inequality influences production by existing as an object
of desire and as a means of pressure; that the evils of poverty are caused
by want, not by inequality; and that, finally, equality is not the goal of
progress, but of retrogression; that inequality is not an accidental evil
of civilization, but the cause of its development; the distance of the
poor from the rich is not the cause of the former's poverty as distinct
from riches, but of their civilized competence as distinct from barbarism;
and that the apparent changes in the direction of equality recorded in
history, have been, in reality, none other than "a more efficient
arrangement of inequalities.
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