Posted: June 29th, 2022

They have increased the comforts of the middle classes

They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they
have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny,
which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. Only
when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall
be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, can the conquests made from the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of
scientific discoverers become the common property of the species,
and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot.
Book IV, Chapter VII
On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes
1. . . . When I speak, either in this place or elsewhere, of “the labouring classes,” or of labourers as a “class,” I use those phrases in compliance with custom, and as descriptive of an existing, but by no
means a necessary or permanent, state of social relations. I do not
recognize as either just or salutary, a state of society in which there is
any “class” which is not labouring; any human beings exempt from
bearing their share of the necessary labours of human life, except
those unable to labour, or who have fairly earned rest by previous toil.
So long, however, as the great social evil exists of a non-labouring
class, labourers also constitute a class, and may be spoken of, though
only provisionally, in that character.
Considered in its moral and social aspect, the state of the labouring people has latterly been a subject of much more speculation and
discussion than formerly; and the opinion that it is not now what it
ought to be has become very general. The suggestions which have
been promulgated, and the controversies which have been excited,
on detached points rather than on the foundations of the subject,
have put in evidence the existence of two conflicting theories,
respecting the social position desirable for manual labourers. The
one may be called the theory of dependence and protection, the
other that of self-dependence.
According to the former theory, the lot of the poor, in all things
which affect them collectively, should be regulated for them, not by
them. They should not be required or encouraged to think for themselves, or give to their own reflection or forecast an influential voice
in the determination of their destiny. It is supposed to be the duty of
the higher classes to think for them, and to take the responsibility of
their lot, as the commander and officers of an army take that of the
192 Book IV, Chapter VII
soldiers composing it. . . . The relation between rich and poor,
according to this theory (a theory also applied to the relation between
men and women), should be only partly authoritative; it should be
amiable, moral, and sentimental: affectionate tutelage on the one
side, respectful and grateful deference on the other. The rich should
be in loco parentis to the poor, guiding and restraining them like children. Of spontaneous action on their part, there should be no need.
They should be called on for nothing but to do their day’s work, and
to be moral and religious. Their morality and religion should be provided for them by their superiors, who should see them properly
taught it, and should do all that is necessary to ensure their being, in
return for labour and attachment, properly fed, clothed, housed, spiritually edified, and innocently amused.
This is the ideal of the future, in the minds of those whose dissatisfaction with the Present assumes the form of affection and regret
towards the Past. Like other ideals, it exercises an unconscious influence on the opinions and sentiments of numbers who never consciously guide themselves by any ideal. It has also this in common
with other ideals, that it has never been historically realized. It makes
its appeal to our imaginative sympathies in the character of a restoration of the good times of our forefathers. But no times can be pointed out in which the higher classes of this or any other country performed a part even distantly resembling the one assigned to them in
this theory. It is an idealization, grounded on the conduct and character of here and there an individual. All privileged and powerful
classes, as such, have used their power in the interest of their own selfishness, and have indulged their self-importance in despising, and
not in lovingly caring for, those who were, in their estimation, degraded by being under the necessity of working for their benefit. I do not
affirm that what has always been must always be, or that human
improvement has no tendency to correct the intensely selfish fillings
engendered by power; but though the evil may be lessened, it cannot
be eradicated until the power itself is withdrawn. This, at least, seems
to me undeniable, that long before the superior classes could be sufficiently improved to govern in the tutelary manner supposed, the
inferior classes would be too much improved to be so governed.
I am quite sensible of all that is seductive in the picture of society which this theory presents. . . . As the idea is essentially repulsive
of a society only held together by the relations and feelings arising
out of pecuniary interests, so there is something naturally attractive
in a form of society abounding in strong personal attachments and
disinterested self-devotion. Of such feelings, it must be admitted that
On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 193
the relation of protector and protected has hitherto been the richest
source. The strongest attachments of human beings in general are
towards the things or the persons that stand between them and some
dreaded evil. Hence, in an age of lawless violence and insecurity,
and general hardness and roughness of manners, in which life is
beset with dangers and sufferings at every step . . . a generous giving
of protection, and a grateful receiving of it, are the strongest ties
which connect human beings; the feelings arising from that relation
are their warmest feelings; all the enthusiasm and tenderness of the
most sensitive natures gather round it; loyalty on the one part and
chivalry on the other are principles exalted into passions. I do not
desire to depreciate these qualities. The error lies in not perceiving
that these virtues and sentiments . . . can no longer have this beautiful and endearing character where there are no longer any serious
dangers from which to protect. What is there in the present state of
society to make it natural that human beings, of ordinary strength
and courage, should glow with the warmest gratitude and devotion
in return for protection? The laws protect them, wherever the laws
do not criminally fail in their duty. To be under the power of someone, instead of being, as formerly, the sole condition of safety, is now,
speaking generally, the only situation which exposes to grievous
wrong. The so-called protectors are now the only persons against
whom, in any ordinary circumstances, protection is needed. The
brutality and tyranny with which every police report is filled are
those of husbands to wives, of parents to children. That the law does
not prevent these atrocities, that it is only now making a first timid
attempt to repress and punish them, is no matter of necessity, but the
deep disgrace of those by whom the laws are made and administered.
No man or woman who either possesses or is able to earn an independent livelihood, requires any other protection than that which
the law could and ought to give. This being the case, it argues great
ignorance of human nature to continue taking for granted that relations founded on protection must always subsist, and not to see that
the assumption of the part of protector, and of the power which
belongs to it, without any of the necessities which justify it, must
engender feelings opposite to loyalty.
Of the working men, at least in the more advanced countries of
Europe, it may be pronounced certain that the patriarchal or paternal system of government is one to which they will not again be subject. That question was decided when they were taught to read, and
allowed access to newspapers and political tracts; when dissenting
preachers were suffered to go among them, and appeal to their facul194 Book IV, Chapter VII
ties and feelings in opposition to the creeds professed and countenanced by their superiors; when they were brought together in numbers, to work socially under the same roof; when railways enabled
them to shift from place to place, and change their patrons and
employers as easily as their coats; when they were encouraged to seek
a share in the government, by means of the electoral franchise. The
working classes have taken their interests into their own hands, and
are perpetually showing that they think the interests of their employers not identical with their own, but opposite to them. . . .
2. . . . The poor have come out of leading-strings, and cannot any
longer be governed or treated like children. To their own qualities
must now be commended the care of their destiny. Modern nations
will have to learn the lesson that the well-being of a people must exist
by means of the justice and self-government . . . of the individual citizens. . . . Whatever advice, exhortation, or guidance is held out to the
labouring classes, must henceforth be tendered to them as equals, and
accepted by them with their eyes open. The prospect of the future
depends on the degree in which they can be made rational beings.
There is no reason to believe that prospect other than hopeful.
The progress indeed has hitherto been, and still is, slow. But there is
a spontaneous education going on in the minds of the multitude. . . .
The instruction obtained from newspapers and political tracts may
not be the most solid kind of instruction, but it is an immense
improvement upon none at all. . . . [T]here is reason to hope that
great improvements . . . in . . . school education will be effected by
the exertions either of government or of individuals, and that the
progress of the mass of the people in mental cultivation, and in the
virtues which are dependent on it, will take place more rapidly. . . .
From this increase of intelligence, several effects may be confidently anticipated. First: that they will become even less willing than
at present to be led and governed, and directed into the way they
should go, by the mere authority and prestige of superiors. If they
have not now, still less will they have hereafter, any deferential awe
or religious principle of obedience, holding them in mental subjection to a class above them. The theory of dependence and protection
will be more and more intolerable to them, and they will require that
their conduct and condition shall be essentially self-governed. It is, at
the same time, quite possible that they may demand, in many cases,
the intervention of the legislature in their affairs, and the regulation
by law of various things which concern them, often under very mistaken ideas of their interest. Still, it is their own will, their own ideas
and suggestions, to which they will demand that effect should be
On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 195
given, and not rules laid down for them by other people. It is quite
consistent with this that they should feel respect for superiority of
intellect and knowledge, and defer much to the opinions, on any subject, of those whom they think well acquainted with it. Such deference is deeply grounded in human nature; but they will judge for
themselves of the persons who are and are not entitled to it.
3. It appears to me impossible but that the increase of intelligence,
of education, and of the love of independence among the working
classes, must be attended with a corresponding growth of the good
sense which manifests itself in provident habits of conduct; and that
population, therefore, will bear a gradually diminishing ratio to capital and employment. This most desirable result would be much
accelerated by another change, which lies in the direct line of the
best tendencies of the time; the opening of industrial occupations
freely to both sexes. The same reasons which make it no longer necessary that the poor should depend on the rich, make it equally
unnecessary that women should depend on men; and the least which
justice requires is that law and custom should not enforce dependence (when the correlative protection has become superfluous) by
ordaining that a woman, who does not happen to have a provision by
inheritance, shall have scarcely any means open to her of gaining a
livelihood, except as a wife and mother. Let women who prefer that
occupation adopt it; but that there should be no option, no other carrière possible for the great majority of women, except in the humbler
departments of life, is a flagrant social injustice. The ideas and institutions by which the accident of sex is made the groundwork of an
inequality of legal rights, and a forced dissimilarity of social functions, must ere long be recognized as the greatest hindrance to moral,
social, and even intellectual improvement. On the present occasion,
I shall only indicate, among the probable consequences of the industrial and social independence of women, a great diminution of the
evil of over-population. It is by devoting one-half of the human
species to that exclusive function, by making it fill the entire life of
one sex and interweave itself with almost all the objects of the other,
that the animal instinct in question is nursed into the disproportionate preponderance which it has hitherto exercised in human life.
4. . . . In the present stage of human progress, when ideas of
equality are daily spreading more widely among the poorer classes,
and can no longer be checked by anything short of the entire suppression of printed discussion and even of freedom of speech, it is
not to be expected that the division of the human race into two
hereditary classes, employers and employed, can be permanently
196 Book IV, Chapter VII
maintained. The relation is nearly as unsatisfactory to the payer of
wages as to the receiver. If the rich regard the poor as, by a kind of
natural law, their servants and dependents, the rich, in their turn, are
regarded as a mere prey and pasture for the poor; the subject of
demands and expectations wholly indefinite, increasing in extent
with every concession made to them. The total absence of regard for
justice or fairness in the relations between the two, is as marked on
the side of the employed as on that of the employers. We look in vain
among the working classes in general for the just pride which will
choose to give good work for good wages; for the most part, their sole
endeavour is to receive as much, and return as little in the shape of
service, as possible. It will sooner or later become insupportable to
the employing classes, to live in close and hourly contact with persons whose interests and feelings are in hostility to them. Capitalists
are almost as much interested as labourers in placing the operations
of industry on such a footing, that those who labour for them may
feel the same interest in the work, which is felt by those who labour
on their own account.
The opinion expressed in a former part of this treatise, respecting
small landed properties and peasant proprietors, may have made the
reader anticipate that a wide diffusion of property in land is the
resource on which I rely for exempting at least the agricultural
labourers from exclusive dependence on labour for hire. Such, however, is not my opinion. . . .
[A] people who have once adopted the large system of production,
either in manufactures or in agriculture, are not likely to recede from
it; and when population is kept in due proportion to the means of
support, it is not desirable that they should. Labour is unquestionably
more productive on the system of large industrial enterprises; the produce, if not greater absolutely, is greater in proportion to the labour
employed: the same number of persons can be supported equally
well with less toil and greater leisure; which will be wholly an advantage, as soon as civilization and improvement have so far advanced
that what is a benefit to the whole shall be a benefit to each individual composing it. And in the moral aspect of the question, which is
still more important than the economical, something better should
be aimed at as the goal of industrial improvement, than to disperse
mankind over the earth in single families, each ruled internally, as
families now are, by a patriarchal despot, and having scarcely any
community of interest, or necessary mental communion, with other
human beings. The domination of the head of the family over the
other members, in this state of things, is absolute; while the effect on
On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 197
his own mind tends towards concentration of all interests in the family, considered as an expansion of self, and absorption of all passions
in that of exclusive possession, of all cares in those of preservation
and acquisition. As a step out of the merely animal state into the
human, out of reckless abandonment to brute instincts into prudential foresight and self-government, this moral condition may be seen
without displeasure. But if public spirit, generous sentiments, or true
justice and equality are desired, association, not isolation, of interests,
is the school in which these excellences are nurtured. The aim of
improvement should be not solely to place human beings in a condition in which they will be able to do without one another, but to
enable them to work with or for one another in relations not involving dependence. Hitherto there has been no alternative for those
who lived by their labour, but that of labouring either each for himself alone, or for a master. But the civilizing and improving influences of association, and the efficiency and economy of production
on a large scale, may be obtained without dividing the producers into
two parties with hostile interests and feelings, the many who do the
work being mere servants under the command of the one who supplies the funds, and having no interest of their own in the enterprise
except to earn their wages with as little labour as possible. The speculations and discussions of the last fifty years, and the events of the
last thirty, are abundantly conclusive on this point. . . . [T]he relation
of masters and work-people will be gradually superseded by partnership, in one of two forms: in some cases, association of the labourers
with the capitalist; in others, and perhaps finally in all, association of
labourers among themselves.
5. The first of these forms of association has long been practiced,
not indeed as a rule, but as an exception. In several departments of
industry, there are already cases in which everyone who contributes
to the work, either by labour or by pecuniary resources, has a partner’s interest in it, proportional to the value of his contribution. It is
already a common practice to remunerate those in whom peculiar
trust is reposed, by means of a percentage on the profits; and cases
exist in which the principle is, with excellent success, carried down
to the class of mere manual labourers. . . .
Mr. Babbage,2 who also gives an account of this system, observes
that the payment to the crews of whaling ships is governed by a sim198 Book IV, Chapter VII
2 [Mill cites Babbage’s Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 3rd ed., chapter 26.]
ilar principle; and that “the profits arising from fishing with nets on
the south coast of England are thus divided: one-half the produce
belongs to the owner of the boat and net; the other half is divided in
equal portions between the persons using it, who are also bound to
Help in repairing the net when required.” Mr. Babbage has the great
merit of having pointed out the practicability, and the advantage, of
extending the principle to manufacturing industry generally. . . .
6. The form of association, however, which if mankind continues
to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that
which can exist between a capitalist as chief and work-people without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers
themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with
which they carry on their operations, and working under managers
elected and removable by themselves. So long as this idea remained
in a state of theory, in the writings of Owen or of Louis Blanc, it may
have appeared, to the common modes of judgment, incapable of
being realized, and not likely to be tried, unless by seizing on the
existing capital and confiscating it for the benefit of the labourers;
which is even now imagined by many persons, and pretended by
more, both in England and on the Continent, to be the meaning and
purpose of Socialism. But there is a capacity of exertion and selfdenial in the masses of mankind, which is never known but on the
rare occasions on which it is appealed to in the name of some great
idea or elevated sentiment. Such an appeal was made by the French
Revolution of 1848. For the first time, it then seemed to the intelligent and generous of the working classes of a great nation, that they
had obtained a government who sincerely desired the freedom and
dignity of the many, and who did not look upon it as their natural and
legitimate state to be instruments of production, worked for the benefit of the possessors of capital. Under this encouragement, the ideas
sown by Socialist writers of an emancipation of labour to be effected
by means of association, throve and fructified; and many working
people came to the resolution, not only that they would work for one
another, instead of working for a master tradesman or manufacturer,
but that they would also free themselves, at whatever cost of labour
or privation, from the necessity of paying, out of the produce of their
industry, a heavy tribute for the use of capital; that they would extinguish this tax, not by robbing the capitalists of what they or their
predecessors had acquired by labour and preserved by economy, but
by honestly acquiring capital for themselves. If only a few operatives
had attempted this arduous task, or if, while many attempted it, a few
only had succeeded, their success might have been deemed to furOn the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 199
nish no argument for their system as a permanent mode of industrial organization. But, excluding all the instances of failure, there exist,
or existed a short time ago, upwards of a hundred successful, and
many eminently prosperous, associations of operatives in Paris alone,
besides a considerable number in the departments. . . .
The capital of most of the associations was originally confined to
the few tools belonging to the founders, and the small sums which
could be collected from their savings, or which were lent to them by
other workpeople as poor as themselves. In some cases, however,
loans of capital were made to them by the republican government;
but the associations which obtained these advances, or at least which
obtained them before they had already achieved success, are, it
appears, in general by no means the most prosperous. The most striking instances of prosperity are in the case of those who have had nothing to rely on but their own slender means and the small loans of fellow workmen, and who lived on bread and water while they devoted
the whole surplus of their gains to the formation of a capital. . . .
The same admirable qualities by which the associations were carried through their early struggles, maintained them in their increasing prosperity. Their rules of discipline, instead of being more lax, are
stricter than those of ordinary workshops; but being rules selfimposed, for the manifest good of the community, and not for the
convenience of an employer regarded as having an opposite interest,
they are far more scrupulously obeyed, and the voluntary obedience
carries with it a sense of personal worth and dignity. With wonderful
rapidity, the associated workpeople have learnt to correct those of the
ideas they set out with which are in opposition to the teaching of reason and experience. Almost all the associations, at first, excluded
piece-work, and gave equal wages whether the work done was more
or less. Almost all have abandoned this system, and after allowing to
everyone a fixed minimum, sufficient for subsistence, they apportion
all further remuneration according to the work done: most of them
even dividing the profits at the end of the year, in the same proportion as the earnings.
It is the declared principle of most of these associations that they
do not exist for the mere private benefit of the individual members,
but for the promotion of the co-operative cause. With every extension, therefore, of their business, they take in additional members, not
(when they remain faithful to their original plan) to receive wages
from them as hired labourers, but to enter at once into the full benefits of the association, without being required to bring anything in
except their labour: the only condition imposed is that of receiving,
200 Book IV, Chapter VII
during a few years, a smaller share in the annual division of profits, as
some equivalent for the sacrifices of the founders. When members
quit the association, which they are always at liberty to do, they carry
none of the capital with them: it remains an indivisible property, of
which the members, for the time being, have the use, but not the
arbitrary disposal; by the stipulations of most of the contracts, even if
the association breaks up, the capital cannot be divided, but must be
devoted entire to some work of beneficence or of public utility. A
fixed, and generally a considerable, proportion of the annual profits is
not shared among the members, but added to the capital of the association, or devoted to the repayment of advances previously made to
it; another portion is set aside to provide for the sick and disabled, and
another to form a fund for extending the practice of association, or
aiding other associations in their need. The managers are paid, like
other members, for the time which is occupied in management, usually at the rate of the highest paid labour; but the rule is adhered to,
that the exercise of power shall never be an occasion of profit. . . .
The vitality of these associations must indeed be great, to have
enabled about twenty of them to survive not only the anti-socialist
reaction, which for the time discredited all attempts to enable
workpeople to be their own employers—not only the tracasseries of
the police, and the hostile policy of the government since the usurpation—but in addition to these obstacles, all the difficulties arising
from the trying condition of financial and commercial affairs from
1854 to 1858. Of the prosperity attained by some of them even while
passing through this difficult period, I have given examples which
must be conclusive to all minds as to the brilliant future reserved for
the principle of co-operation. . . .
It is hardly possible to take any but a hopeful view of the
prospects of mankind when, in two leading countries of the world,
the obscure depths of society contain simple working men whose
integrity, good sense, self-command, and honourable confidence in
one another, have enabled them to carry these noble experiments to
the triumphant issue which the facts recorded in the preceding
pages attest.3
From the progressive advance of the co-operative movement, a
great increase may be looked for even in the aggregate productiveness of industry. . . .
On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 201
3 [Ed.—I have omitted the many specific examples described by Mill.]
[C]o-operation tends . . . to increase the productiveness of labour
. . . by placing the labourers, as a mass, in a relation to their work
which would make it their principle and their interest—at present it
is neither—to do the utmost, instead of the least possible, in
exchange for their remuneration. It is scarcely possible to rate too
highly this material benefit, which yet is as nothing compared with
the moral revolution in society that would accompany it: the healing
of the standing feud between capital and labour; the transformation
of human life, from a conflict of classes struggling for opposite interests, to a friendly rivalry in the pursuit of a good common to all; the
elevation of the dignity of labour; a new sense of security and independence in the labouring class; and the conversion of each human
being’s daily occupation into a school of the social sympathies and
the practical intelligence.
Such is the noble idea which the promoters of Co-operation
should have before them. But to attain, in any degree, these objects,
it is indispensable that all, and not some only, of those who do the
work should be identified in interest with the prosperity of the undertaking. . . .
Under the most favourable supposition, it will be desirable, and
perhaps for a considerable length of time, that individual capitalists,
associating their work-people in the profits, should coexist with even
those co-operative societies which are faithful to the co-operative
principle. Unity of authority makes many things possible, which
could not or would not be undertaken subject to the chance of divided councils or changes in the management. A private capitalist,
exempt from the control of a body, if he is a person of capacity, is considerably more likely than almost any association to run judicious
risks, and originate costly improvements. Co-operative societies may
be depended on for adopting improvements after they have been tested by success, but individuals are more likely to commence things
previously untried. Even in ordinary business, the competition of
capable persons who, in the event of failure, are to have all the loss,
and in the case of success, the greater part of the gain, will be very
useful in keeping the managers of co-operative societies up to the
due pitch of activity and vigilance.
When, however, co-operative societies shall have sufficiently multiplied, it is not probable that any but the least valuable work-people
will any longer consent to work all their lives for wages merely; both
private capitalists and associations will gradually find it necessary to
make the entire body of labourers participants in profits. Eventually,
and in perhaps a less remote future than may be supposed, we may,
202 Book IV, Chapter VII
through the co-operative principle, see our way to a change in society, which would combine the freedom and independence of the individual with the moral, intellectual, and economical advantages of
aggregate production; and which, without violence or spoliation, or
even any sudden disturbance of existing habits and expectations,
would realize, at least in the industrial department, the best aspirations of the democratic spirit, by putting an end to the division of
society into the industrious and the idle, and effacing all social distinctions but those fairly earned by personal services and exertions.
Associations like those which we have described, by the very process
of their success, are a course of education in those moral and active
qualities by which alone success can be either deserved or attained.
As associations multiplied, they would tend more and more to absorb
all work-people, except those who have too little understanding, or
too little virtue, to be capable of learning to act on any other system
than that of narrow selfishness. As this change proceeded, owners of
capital would gradually find it to their advantage, instead of maintaining the struggle of the old system with work-people of only the
worst description, to lend their capital to the associations; to do this
at a diminishing rate of interest, and at last, perhaps, even to
exchange their capital for terminable annuities. In this or some such
mode, the existing accumulations of capital might honestly, and by a
kind of spontaneous process, become in the end the joint property of
all who participate in their productive employment: a transformation
which, thus effected, (and assuming, of course, that both sexes participate equally in the rights and in the government of the association)
would be the nearest approach to social justice, and the most beneficial ordering of industrial affairs for the universal good, which it is
possible at present to foresee.
7. I agree, then, with the Socialist writers in their conception of
the form which industrial operations tend to assume in the advance
of improvement; and I entirely share their opinion that the time is
ripe for commencing this transformation, and that it should, by all
just and effectual means, be aided and encouraged. But while I agree
and sympathize with Socialists in this practical portion of their aims,
I utterly dissent from the most conspicuous and vehement part of
their teaching, their declamations against competition. . . . They forget that wherever competition is not, monopoly is; and that monopoly, in all its forms, is the taxation of the industrious for the support
of indolence, if not of plunder. They forget, too, that with the exception of competition among labourers, all other competition is for the
benefit of the labourers, by cheapening the articles they consume;
On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes 203
that competition even in the labour market is a source not of low but
of high wages, wherever the competition for labour exceeds the competition of labour, as in America, in the colonies, and in the skilled
trades; and never could be a cause of low wages, save by the overstocking of the labour market through the too great numbers of the
labourers’ families; while, if the supply of labourers is excessive, not
even Socialism can prevent their remuneration from being low.
Besides, if association were universal, there would be no competition
between labourer and labourer; and that between association and
association would be for the benefit of the consumers—that is, of the
associations; of the industrious classes generally.
I do not pretend that there are no inconveniences in competition,
or that the moral objections urged against it by Socialist writers, as a
source of jealousy and hostility among those engaged in the same
occupation, are altogether groundless. But if competition has its
evils, it prevents greater evils. . . . It is the common error of Socialists
to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be
passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course
once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they
consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will
thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve
them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can
foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress. . . .
204 Book IV, Chapter VII

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