These false theories rest on the false belief that equal education could ever produce equal social conditions • 348 The majority of each class will remain in the class in which they were born • 348 Only the efficiently exceptional can rise out of their own class, • 348 and it is the ambition of the efficiently exceptional only that it is really desirable to stimulate • 349 The average man should be taught to aim at embellishing his position, not at escaping from it • 349 CHAPTER IV INEQUALITY, HAPPINESS, AND PROGRESS The radical politician will object to the foregoing conclusions in terms with which we are familiar • 351 The radical theorist will put the same objections more logically. If the desire of exceptional wealth is really the strongest motive, he will say that it follows that most men, since they cannot all be exceptionally rich, must always remain miserable • 352 Now the first answer to this is that the fact that all men will never be equally wealthy does not prevent the conditions of all men from improving absolutely • 353 Another answer is that if inequality in the possession of the most coveted prizes of life implies misery amongst the majority, this evil would be intensified rather than mitigated by socialists, who would substitute unequal honour for unequal wealth • 354 The final answer is that the unequal distribution of wealth has no natural tendency to cause unhappiness; • 357 for men’s desires vary. There is equality of desire for the necessaries of life only; for this desire rests on men’s physical natures, which are similar; • 357 but the desire for superfluities depends on their mental powers, which vary • 358 The special appeal of luxury is mainly to the mind and the imagination— • 358 the luxury, for instance, of a large house, • 359 or sleeping accommodation in a train • 359 Consequently the desire for luxury and wealth, like the pleasure they give, depends on peculiar mental powers or peculiar mental states • 360 Amongst most men the desire for wealth is naturally a speculative desire only • 361 It implies no pain caused by the want of wealth • 361 The desire ceases to be speculative and becomes a practical craving only when the imagination is exceptionally strong, and a strong belief is present that the attainment of wealth is possible • 362 The desire for wealth, in fact, is in proportion to each man’s belief that by him personally it is attainable • 364 This belief is naturally confined to men with exceptional imaginations and exceptional productive powers • 365 It only becomes general by the popularising of false theories which represent wealth as attainable by all, without exceptional talent or exceptional exertion • 366 It is roused, for instance, in a man who suddenly is told that he has a legal right to an estate which previously he never thought of coveting • 366 The socialistic teaching of to-day creates a spurious desire for wealth by its doctrines of impossible rights to it • 367