a set of pleasant people, but that there is no horrible suffering and destitution in the next street or anywhere else, which we have to forget before we can be happy. Wealth in the sense of ordinary welfare and comfort must be not only abundant but well distributed before the world can be a pleasant place to live in for those who have any sympathy with human suffering.
Thus we see that material output, though it is very far from being the end of all things, is of very great assistance in helping to produce the sort of world at which we want to arrive. A certain amaqunt of it is essential to existence, and a great increase in it will help very much, as human nature is at present, to make everybody pleasant to live with in the truest sense of the word, to make the world and all the conditions under which we live beautiful and noble, and to enable all to be educated in the truest and widest sense of the word. It follows, therefore, that in order to get at the world that we want, an increase in material output and a great improvement in its diffusion among all classes, are essential. When we consider the economic system under which we live and alternatives to it which are suggested by its critics, the first question that we have to ask
