These are four different kinds of welfare, each of which is essential, and only confusion of thought follows any attempt to treat them all as wealth, however they may be intermingled and exchanged. Health is essential in gaining a full measure of wealth and wisdom, and perhaps in maintaining genuine character; but a healthy life gives no assurance of complete welfare. The facts concerning health in a community make a distinct subject of study for promotion of welfare, and we call it public hygiene. The science of education deals with ways and means of securing public wisdom. The science of government includes all facts relative to public virtue. So the facts by which we know the nature and uses of accumulated wealth in any community make a distinct study under the name economic science; it deals with certain definite groups of facts. To call everything good "wealth" and everything evil "ilth" adds nothing but confusion to our thoughts.
_Mutual welfare._--Every human being in society is directly interested in the study of wealth as related to his own and his neighbors' welfare. No one can understand his relations to those about him in the family, the neighborhood, his country and the world without some understanding of the sources and uses of wealth all about him. His very industry gains its reward by certain means in society depending upon economic principles. His motives for accumulating wealth have a distinct place. His uses of accumulated wealth are a part of the general facts which make wealth desirable. So the study of wealth in society must be everybody's study, if each wishes to do best for himself or for his neighbors. In such study of welfare every one finds his interests completely blended with the interests of others. His existence is part of a larger existence called society, from which he receives himself in large measure and most of his satisfaction; to which he contributes in like measure a portion of its essential character and future existence.
The old idea that one gives up freedom of self for the advantages given by society has no foundation in fact, because we are born into our place in society without power to escape its advantages, disadvantages or responsibilities. The maxim "Each for all and all for each" is thoroughly grounded in the constitution of man; his needs and abilities enforce society and insist upon community of interests. Even personal wealth confers little welfare outside of its relations to other human beings. The whole progress of the human race tends toward acceptance of the clear vision of Tennyson, where