XIII.

RICH.-MIDDLE CLASS.-POOR.

THERE are two different ways in which classes of things can be opposed to each other: viz. as contraries, and as extremes. They are opposed as contraries, when a class is logically divided in such a manner that every individual of it, not contained in the one member of the division, is contained in the other; when the two species are together equivalent to the whole genus to which they belong. Thus true is contrary to false, straight is contrary to crooked, odd is contrary to even, knowledge is contrary to ignorance; because all propositions which are not true must be false, all lines which are not straight must be crooked, all numbers which are not odd must be even, and a person must be ignorant of all things about which he has no knowledge. On the other hand, things are opposed as extremes, when they do not together make up, or exhaust, the class or genus to which they belong, but there is between them a middle state, from which they are not precisely divided, and into which they insensibly graduate at both

its extremities. Instances of this class of opposites are old and young, tall and short, belief and disbelief, love and hatred, hot and cold, light and dark, &c. For it does not follow that because a man is not old, he is therefore young; because he is not tall, he is therefore short; because the mind does not believe, it therefore disbelieves; because it does not love, it therefore hates; because an object is not hot, it is therefore cold; because it is not light, it is therefore dark. Between these several extremes there is an intermediate state, which is respectively called middle-aged, middle-sized, doubt, indifference, tepid or lukewarm, dusk or glimmering, &c. Such extremes are not the negative of each other, nor are they divided by a clear and definite line which can never be passed; but they admit of an imperceptible transition from one most dissimilar state to another, and may be likened to the opposite ends of a graduated scale, between which there is an infinite number of degrees, but no marked separation. It is to this kind of opposites that Mr. Herschel alludes, in his Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,* when he says that " there can be little doubt that the solid, liquid, and aëriform states of bodies, are merely stages in a progress of gradual transition from one extreme to the

other; and that however strongly marked the distinctions between them may appear, they will ultimately turn out to be separated by no sudden or violent line of demarcation, but shade into each other by insensible gradations."

Among the many opposites which belong to the class of extremes, are the terms rich and poor, which denote two classes in the community, of which the members severally possess an amount of wealth greater or less than a certain fluctuating and uncertain quantity, which entitles its possessor to be called a person of moderate property, of middling fortune, neither poor nor rich; or more commonly to be named a member of the middle ranks. In all societies which have advanced beyond a savage state, and have accumulated some stores of wealth, there necessarily exists this triple distinction of classes: for though all the members of a community may be equally poor, they cannot be equally rich. But although these classes must, except among the rudest savages, everywhere exist; yet the proportions which they bear to one another in different states may be very various, and the three parts may be unequally developed by the peculiar circumstances of each community: for instance, in some states the middle class may be of small account, and the rich and poor together make up a large majority of the whole

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population; as, in countries where slavery prevails, the society is divided into rich and poor, with scarcely any intervening order: the same state of things also is described by Aristotle, as existing in many small Greek states where the opposite parties of rich and poor were, on account of the scantiness of the population, precisely distinguished; and by Thucydides* as originating in the bloody contests between the rich and poor, in which the middle ranks, who took no part in the struggle, were destroyed by both parties, as well because they would not join either side, as from a feeling of jealousy lest they should escape the common ruin.

However the pernicious institution of predial and domestic servitude, or an injudicious and unskilful arrangement of the sovereign power, may tend to obliterate the middle rank, and to destroy the connecting links between the rich and the poor, yet in all communities, settled in a fixed habitation, and restrained by a regular government, there must exist rudiments of all three classes; and the comparative historian may, like the comparative anatomist, discover throughout the various forms of civilized societies, traces of the corresponding orders which, though subject to disproportionate enlargement and contraction, sometimes swelled to an inordi

*B. 3. ch. 82.

nate size, and sometimes shrivelled into insignificance, by the diseased action of the body politic, may yet be clearly referred to one and the same imaginary pattern.

The names of rich and poor are, however, applied to different classes in the community, not with reference to one particular standard, but with reference to the condition of the society which they divide into the classes so denominated. No man is absolutely rich, or poor, or of middling fortune; but one man is rich, and another is poor, as compared with a third who is neither poor nor rich, but of moderate property. Accordingly, these terms as much imply each other, and are as unintelligible without such a mutual reference, as master and servant, husband and wife, debtor and creditor: nor can one man be called poor, without supposing the existence of another who is called rich; both names being applied to signify a common relation to a certain middle point, fixed according to the circumstances of each particular case; as things are said to be high and low, or long and short, as compared with some arbitrary standard which varies according to the nature of the object so characterised. Hence it appears that the classes of rich and poor in different states have independently no resemblance to each other; they are only similar in their relative positions. Thus a poor man