the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are
part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping
the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by
amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the
difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on
such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic
virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just
as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves,
and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those
who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it,
so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do
most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we
have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem
and know the life--educated men who live in the East End--coming
forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic
impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the
ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are
perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private
property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from
the institution of private property. It is both immoral and
unfair.

Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will
be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up