with such a mass of artificial troubles that their few moments of genuine repose do not exceed those vouchsafed to their antipodes.  You would urge the sufferings of the criminal class under punishment?  I balance against it the misery of the rich under the scourge of their own excesses.  It is a mistake due to mere thoughtlessness, or ignorance, to imagine the labouring, or even the destitute, population as ceaselessly groaning beneath the burden of their existence.  Go along the poorest street in the East End of London, and you will hear as much laughter, witness as much gaiety, as in any thoroughfare of the West.  Laughter and gaiety of a miserable kind?  I speak of it as relative to the habits and capabilities of the people.  A being of superior intelligence regarding humanity with an eye of perfect understanding would discover that life was enjoyed every bit as much in the slum as in the palace.’

’You would consider it fair to balance excessive suffering of the body in one class against excessive mental suffering in another?’

’Undoubtedly.  It is a fair application of my theory.  But let me preach a little longer.  It is my belief that, though this equality of distribution remains a fact, the sum total of happiness in nations is seriously diminishing.  Not only on account of the growth of population; the poor have more to suffer, the rich less of true enjoyment, the mass of comfortable people fall into an ever-increasing anxiety.  A Radical will tell you that this is a transitional state.  Possibly, if we accept the Radical theories of progress.  I held them once in a very light-hearted way; I am now far less disposed to accept them as even imaginably true.  Those who are enthusiastic for the spirit of the age proceed on the principle of countenancing evil that good may some day come of it.  Such a position astonishes me.  Is the happiness of a man now alive of less account than that of the man who shall live two hundred. years hence?  Altruism is doubtless good, but only so when it gives pure enjoyment; that is to say, when it is embraced. instinctively.  Shall I frown on a man because he cannot find his bliss in altruism and bid him perish to make room for a being more perfect?  What right have we to live thus in the far-off future?  Thinking in this way, I have a profound dislike and distrust of this same progress.  Take one feature of it—­universal education.  That, I believe, works most patently for the growing misery I speak of.  Its results affect all classes, and all for the worse.  I said that I used to have a very bleeding of the heart for the half-clothed and quarter-fed hangers-on to civilisation; I think far less of them now than of another class in appearance much better off.  It is a class created by the mania of education, and it consists of those unhappy men and women whom unspeakable cruelty endows with intellectual needs whilst refusing them the sustenance they are taught to crave.  Another generation, and this class will be terribly extended, its existence blighting the whole social state.  Every one of these poor creatures has a right to curse the work of those who clamour progress, and pose as benefactors of their race.