V

THE FUTURE

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to-day. There would be nothing surprising inthis even in the light of our present knowledge.It would not be foolish to contemplate thepossibility of a far greater progress still.

ii

Let us, for the sake of argument, supposethat a hundred years hence we are all of us,on the average, eight times better off in theeconomic sense than we are to-day. Assuredlythere need be nothing here to surprise us.

Now it is true that the needs of humanbeings may seem to be insatiable. But theyfall into two classes—those needs which areabsolute in the sense that we feel them what-ever the situation of our fellow human beingsmay be, and those which are relative in thesense that we feel them only if their satisfactionlifts us above, makes us feel superior to, ourfellows. Needs of the second class, those whichsatisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed beinsatiable; for the higher the general level, thehigher still are they. But this is not so trueof the absolute needs—a point may soon bereached, much sooner perhaps than we are allof us aware of, when these needs are satisfiedin the sense that we prefer to devote our furtherenergies to non-economic purposes.

Now for my conclusion, which you will find,I think, to become more and more startling tothe imagination the longer you think about it.

I draw the conclusion that, assuming no im-