that you would be any happier?  Just think it over for a moment.  The rich people are exterminated, their goods are divided among you; you are already making a discovery, viz., that the wealthy people are in a very small minority, hardly one in two hundred, and that the division of their whole property amounts to very little for each of you.  But suppose, for the sake of argument, that you all become rich.  What then?  You throw away your working clothes and dress yourselves in silk; you deck yourselves with silver and gold ornaments, and you sit on soft-cushioned sofas.  Think how long these luxuries would last—­a month perhaps, at the most a year.  Then the rich man’s wine is all drunk, and his larder empty, the silk clothes are worn out, and the sofas torn; you cannot eat precious stones and gold, and if you do not mean to starve you must begin working again, and after the extermination of the rich man and the division of his property you are exactly in the position you were in before.”

He paused a moment or two, in which there was silence for the first time, and then went on: 

“This all means that your bondage is not laid on you by man, but by Nature herself.  Life is hard and wearisome, and no laws or orders of State or society can make it otherwise.  The simple minds of men understood this a thousand years ago, and they did not rest until they had found out a reason for everything, so they sought through the authors of the Jewish Bible for a reasonable explanation of our mournful destiny on this earth, and comforted themselves with the assertion that mankind was atoning for the sins of its forefathers.  You, the sons of the nineteenth century, do not believe in this any longer, but see in the system of profits and the injustice of our social conditions the causes of your misery.  Your explanation is, however, fully as much a fabrication as the Biblical one.  Pain and death are the conditions of our existence, and for that reason cannot be done away with.  If a miracle could happen, and you could all be happy in the way you wish, namely, living your life without work, without suffering, and with a great deal of enjoyment, what would happen then?  The race would increase so fast that after one or two generations there would hardly be elbow-room, and bread would be as scarce as it is now.  It is the difficulty of providing for children which limits the population, and this difficulty fixes the limit.  Understand this too, do what you will, you can only procure momentary relief, and every relief procured means an increase of population.  Whatever your methods of labor are, however the fruits of it are distributed, you will never produce up to the satisfaction of your wants; and the sweat of your brow will always be in vain if you set yourself against the hostile forces of nature.”

Wilhelm paused a moment in the deep stillness which now reigned in the hall, and then went on: