Excerpt from The Real Wealth of Nations: Or a New Civilization, and Its Economic Foundations The earth is a beautiful place, but what a mass of so-called civilized men lead unbeautiful lives 1 While the animals have less capacity for enjoyment, at least they do not worsen the conditions provided for them by a bountiful Nature, whereas it is frequently urged as an argument against reform that man is so satisfied with degrading surroundings which are not those of Nature that he would have to be moved from them by force. Can man after all be so wicked or so far below the animals in perception that, with his priceless gift of reason, he should build himself horrible habitations and carry ugliness into the country rather than bring the beauty of the latter into the towns? If civilization and industrialism necessitate their present setting, they must be a curse and not a blessing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.