CHAPTER IX. BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION.

the expense of all his other gifts. Barefaced covetousness was the moving spirit of civilization from its first dawn to the present day; wealth, and again wealth, and for the third time wealth; wealth, not of society, but of the puny individual, was its only and final aim. If nevertheless the advanced development of science, and at repeated times the highest flower of art, fell into its lap, this was only due to the fact that without them the highest emoluments of modern wealth would have been missing. Exploitation of one class by another being the basis of civilization, its whole development involves a continual contradiction. Every progress of production is at the same time a retrogression in the condition of the oppressed class, that is of the great majority. Every benefit for one class is necessarily an evil for the other, every new emancipation of one class a new oppression for the other. The most drastic proof of this is furnished by the introduction of machinery, the effects of which are well known to-day. And while there is hardly any distinction between rights and duties among barbarians, as we have seen, civilization makes the difference between these two plain even to the dullest mind. For now one class has nearly all the rights, the other class nearly all the duties.