W. H. Mallock

“ But the remaining three quarters of our capital consists of material things; and what we have seen with regard to them may strike many people as incredible; for the moment we imagine them violently seized and distributed, they seem to dwindle and shrivel up; and the share of each individual suggests to one’s mind nothing but a series of ludicrous pictures—pictures of men whose heritage in all this unimaginable wealth is an acre of ground, two wheels of a steam-engine, a bedroom, a pearl pin, and the tenth part of a pig. ”

“ The result of such conditions, in so far as they prevailed in London when London life became first familiar to myself, was that society, in the narrower sense of the word, was taken in a spirit more serious than that which it excites to-day. To say nothing of ambitious hostesses who vied with one another in the entertainment of guests whose very names had a ring of importance when printed in the Morning Post, society was, even for men of conspicuous talent—such, for example, as Lord Houghton, Augustus Savile, and Hayward—a matter as serious as politics, or any war not of the first importance. ”

“ But such simple divisions of labour as those which are here in question fail, for a reason which will be specified in another moment, to carry us far in the history of industrial progress. They do but bring us to the starting-point of production as it exists to-day. The efficiency of productive effort has made all its most astounding advances since the precise time at which the Wealth of Nations was written; and these advances we shall find that it is quite impossible to explain merely by a further division of average and equal labour. ”

“ It is easy to see that no rich society would be endurable if the only men in it were men who had just made their fortunes, and if, on their deaths, their families disappeared from it in the gulfs of destitution. Anything more exquisitely ludicrous than the socialistic proposal that great wealth-producers should be allowed large incomes to spend, but that they must not on any account be allowed to invest any part of them, or use it in a way by which more income may result from it—anything more ludicrous than this it is not possible to conceive. ”

“ Let him imagine himself arraigned before the Deity at the Day of Judgment, and the Deity saying this to him: “You found when you entered the world that a man’s labour on the average produced each year such and such an amount of wealth. Have you done anything to make the product of the same labour greater? Have you discovered or applied any new principle to any branch of industry? Have you guided industry into any new direction? Have the exertions of any other human being been made more efficacious owing to your powers of invention, of enterprise, or of management?” ”

“ What shall we do if one half of Humanity has no feeling of honour?'
'Oh!' said Virginia, 'it was all for the love of truth—of solemn and holy truth. I sacrificed every other feeling for that. But I have not told you my truth yet; and I am determined you shall hear it, or I must still remain in my sins. Paul, I am a married woman; and I discover, in spite of that, that I have fallen in love with you. My husband, it is true, is far away; and whatever we do, he could never possibly be the wiser. ”

“ It may be said indeed, and very truly, that under favourable circumstances there must always remain a joy in the mere act of living, in the exercising of the bodily functions, and in the exciting and appeasing of the bodily appetites. Will anything, it may be asked, for instance, rob the sunshine of its gladness, or deaden the vital influence of a spring morning?—when the sky is a cloudless blue, and the sea is like a wild hyacinth, when the pouring brooks seem to live as they sparkle, and the early air amongst the woodlands has the breath in it of unseen violets? ”

“ Society has become divided into two contrasted groups—an enormous group, and a small one. The enormous group—the great body of every nation—the people—the labouring mass—the one true producing power—has been left without any implements by means of which its labour can exert itself, and these implements have been monopolised by the small group alone. The people at large, in fact, have become like the employés of a single mill-owner, who have no choice but to work within the walls of that mill or starve ”

“ Behind the poet stands the man of profound reflection, the man of the world, the philosopher, the passionate or disillusioned lover. He is all of these before he is a literary artist. His writing is only the vehicle by which he communicates what he is in all these capacities to others, and so leaves a practical impression on the thoughts and emotions of the world.
And what is true of verse is more obviously true of prose. Of all prose works which have captured attention by their mere merits as literature, no better example can be given than the great masterpiece of Gibbon. ”

“ Can we conceive a more potent stimulus to rectitude, to daily and hourly striving after a true life, than this ever-present sense that we are indeed immortal; not that we have an immortal something within us—but that in very truth we ourselves, our thinking, feeling, acting personalities, are immortal?' MR. FREDERIC HARRISON.
'As we live for others in life, so we live in others after death.... How deeply does such a belief as this bring home to each moment of life the mysterious perpetuity of ourselves! For good, for evil, we cannot die. ”

“ Socialism is said by some to be the protest of increasing poverty against increasing wealth; by some to be the natural voice of highly organised labour, which has come at last to be capable of self-government; and by some to be an embodiment of the esoteric philosophy of Hegel. In reality it is the embodiment of the results of indiscriminate education on talents which are exceptional, but at the same time inefficient. The avowed object of socialism is a redistribution of wealth ”