expect that some day she will arrive, with the husband and the pile in her train.
It thus seems that the drawbacks of inequality are bad for a limited number, both of those who are apparently benefited by them, and of those to whom they are a handicap, but that their adverse effect on the latter can be greatly reduced, if the inequalities of birth and fortune are not allowed to be a serious bar to success in life. When we have granted all this, we have next to consider what are the advantages that the capitalistic system carries with it. In the first place, there is the moral advantage involved by individual choice and responsibility which make men and women of us, while grandmotherly regulations under State or Guild monopoly would make us into machines. In the second, it is clear that the ordinary man will work harder and better if he knows that the result of his work is going to be an improvement in his economic position and in that of his dependents. For every man to work for all the rest just as hard as he will now work for his own hand is an ideal to which human nature may some day attain; but we have not yet arrived there, and if we try to make things better by assuming that we have, we may put back the clock of progress by a century or two.
