There is in this fact much more than at first appears.  Let us go back to a point insisted on in the previous chapter.  It was there shown, in connection with the question of abstract justice, that those who attack interest on the ground that it is essentially income for which its recipients give nothing in return, fall into the error of ignoring the element of time, without reference to which the whole process of life is unintelligible.  It was shown, by various examples, that in a large number of cases the efforts which ultimately result in the production of great wealth do not produce it till after, often till long after, the original effort has come altogether to an end.  Let us now take this point in connection, not with abstract theories, but with the concrete facts of conduct.  Here again those who attack interest fall into the same error.  For example, in answer to arguments used by me when speaking in America, one socialistic critic eagerly following another called my attention by name to persons notoriously wealthy, some of whom had never engaged in active business at all, while others had ceased to do so for many years; and demanded of me whether I contended that idlers such as these are doing anything whatever to produce the incomes which they are now enjoying.  If they are, said the critics, let this wonderful fact be demonstrated.  If they are not, then it must stand to reason that the community will gain, and cannot possibly suffer, by gradually taking the incomes of these persons away from them, and rendering it impossible that incomes of a similar kind shall in the future be ever enjoyed by anybody.

The general nature of the error involved in this class of argument can be shown by a very simple illustration.  In many countries the government year by year makes a large sum by state lotteries.  This may be a vicious procedure, but let us assume for the moment that it is legitimate, and that everybody is interested in its perpetuation.  The largest of the prizes drawn in such lotteries is considerable—­often amounting to more than twenty thousand pounds.  Now, as soon as the drawing on any one occasion had been accomplished, it might be argued with perfect truth, in respect of that occasion only, that, the man who had won such fortune having done nothing to produce it, the community would be so much richer if the government, having paid the money to him, were to take it all back again by a special tax on winnings.  This would be true with respect to that one occasion; but if any government were to follow such a procedure systematically, no one would ever buy a lottery ticket again, and the whole lottery system would thenceforth come to an end.

What is true of wealth won in lotteries is true of wealth in general.  If the desire of possessing wealth is in any way a stimulus to the production of it, those who are motived to produce it by this desire to-day are motived by the desire of a something which they see to be desirable and attainable because they see it around them, embodied in the position of others, as the final result of the efforts of a long-past yesterday.  If this result were never to be seen realised, no human being would make any effort to achieve it.