It is said: there are the rich and the poor. But what more vague than such terms? Where does poverty stop? Undoubtedly, there are wretched people in all societies. There is no society wholly free of poor unfortunates, so unfortunate as to require the assistance of others. It is what we call beggary, and it exists in all societies. But this is not an element which may be said to constitute a class. It is not any more correct to say the class of beggars than the class of invalids. There are invalids in all societies, and we are all subject to becoming invalids, but we cannot say that there is a class of invalids. Those who are ill are to be pitied, but they do not, I repeat, constitute a class, which would allow us to divide society into two parts: a class of people that are well and people that are sick. The same with beggary; it is an anomaly, an unfortunate exception to the rule, and very sad for those who are its victims, but it does not constitute a class. Yet it is not this we generally understand by the poor and the rich classes. We understand by rich those who have a certain appearance of well-being; and by poor those who work more or less with their hands. Now, there is nothing more false than such a distinction, for, among those called rich, there are many that are poor, and wealth and poverty are not generally absolutely different. It depends on the relations between the wants and the means of satisfying them. How many among physicians, lawyers, artists, for example--among men who belong to what we call the middle class--are, I ask, not only poor, but wretched? How are we to know them? What is it marks in society the rich and the poor? Here we have, for instance, country people, good folks, who have never opened a book, who do not know A from B, and who are rich; and again others of the middle class who are poor. The conditions in society so intertwine that it is impossible to cut it in two and say: these are the rich classes, these the poor. There is an infinite variety of degrees, each having some sort of property, the one more, the other less. In such a number of degrees it is impossible to distinguish precisely the beginning or the end. We admit these individual inequalities, and as many different conditions as there are individuals; but there are no classes, and no one could tell their beginnings and ends. How could you determine the amount of property requisite to belong to either of these categories--the rich or the poor? Shall you say that the rich man is he who has any capital, and the poor, he who has not any? There are many people with capital that are poor, and many without who are very well off. These are but arbitrary distinctions.