Abstract justice, however, in a case like this, gives us no practical guidance, until we interpret it in connection with concrete facts, and translate the just into terms of the practicable.

CHAPTER XIV

        Thesocialistic attack on interest and the nature of its several
        errors

        The practical outcome of the moral attack on interest is
        logically an attack on bequest.

        Modern socialism would logically allow a man to inherit
        accumulations, and to spend the principal, but not to receive
        interest on his money as an investment.

        What would be the result if all who inherited capital spent it
        as income, instead of living on the interest of it?

        Two typical illustrations of these ways of treating capital.

        The ultimate difference between the two results.

What the treatment of capital as income would mean, if the practice were made universal.  It would mean the gradual loss of all the added productive forces with which individual genius has enriched the world.

        Practical condemnation of proposed attack on interest.

        Another aspect of the matter.

        Those who attack interest, as distinct from other kinds of
        money-reward, admit that the possession of wealth is necessary
        as a stimulus to production.

        But the possession of wealth is desired mainly for its social
        results far more than for its purely individual results.

        Interest as connected with the sustentation of a certain mode of
        social life.

        Further consideration of the manner in which those who attack
        interest ignore the element of time, and contemplate the present
        moment only.

        The economic functions of a class which is not, at a given
        moment, economically productive.

Systematic failure of those who attack interest to consider society as a whole, continually emerging from the past, and dependent for its various energies on the prospects of the future.

        Consequent futility of the general attack on interest, though
        interest in certain cases may be justly subjected to special but
        not exaggerated burdens.

CHAPTER XV

        Equalityof opportunity

        Equality of opportunity, as an abstract demand, is in an
        abstract sense just; but it changes its character when applied
        to a world of unequal individuals.

        Equality of opportunity in the human race-course.  To multiply
        competitors is to multiply failures.

        Educational opportunity.  Unequal students soon make
        opportunities unequal.