Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of WealthGeorge, Henry
General
Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth
George, Henry
Economics; Single tax
Out upon nature, in upon himself, back through the mists that shroud
the past, forward into the darkness that overhangs the future, turns
the restless desire that arises when the animal wants slumber in
satisfaction. Beneath things, he seeks the law; he would know how the
globe was forged and the stars were hung, and trace to their origins
the springs of life. And, then, as the man develops his nobler nature,
there arises the desire higher yet—the passion of passions, the hope
of hopes—the desire that he, even he, may somehow aid in making life
better and brighter, in destroying want and sin, sorrow and shame. He
masters and curbs the animal; he turns his back upon the feast and
renounces the place of power; he leaves it to others to accumulate
wealth, to gratify pleasant tastes, to bask themselves in the warm
sunshine of the brief day. He works for those he never saw and never
can see; for a fame, or maybe but for a scant justice, that can only
come long after the clods have rattled upon his coffin lid. He toils
in the advance, where it is cold, and there is little cheer from men,
and the stones are sharp and the brambles thick. Amid the scoffs of the
present and the sneers that stab like knives, he builds for the future;
he cuts the trail that progressive humanity may hereafter broaden into
a highroad. Into higher, grander spheres desire mounts and beckons, and
a star that rises in the east leads him on. Lo! the pulses of the man
throb with the yearnings of the god—he would aid in the process of the
suns!
Is not the gulf too wide for the analogy to span? Give more food,
open fuller conditions of life, and the vegetable or animal can but
multiply; the man will develop. In the one the expansive force can but
extend existence in new numbers; in the other, it will inevitably tend
to extend existence in higher forms and wider powers. Man is an animal;
but he is an animal plus something else. He is the mythic earth-tree,
whose roots are in the ground, but whose topmost branches may blossom
in the heavens!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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