It is only by means of an assumption of this purely practical kind that the abstract moral principle can be applied to the case at all; and thus let us approach the problem from whatever side we will, we are brought from the region of theory down into that of practice, not, indeed, by an abrupt leap, but by a gradual and necessary transition.

We are not abandoning our considerations of what, in abstract justice, ought to be; but we are compelled to interpret what ought to be by considerations of what, as the result of such and such arrangements, will be.
To sum up, then, the conclusions which we have reached thus far--if we confine our attention to those recipients of interest who have themselves produced the capital from which the interest is derived, and compare such incomes with those which renew themselves only as the result of continued effort, it is absolutely impossible, on any general theory of justice, to sanction the latter as earned, and condemn the former as unearned.

If, on the other hand, we turn to those whose incomes consist of interest on capital produced by, and inherited from, their fathers, and if we argue that here at all events we come to a class of interest on which its living recipients can have no justifiable claim, since we start with admitting that it originates in the efforts of the dead, our argument, though plausible in its premises, is stultified by its logical consequence; since the same principle on which we are urged as a sacred duty to take the income in question away from its present possessors, would forbid our allowing it to pass into the possession of anybody else.

In short, if continued daily labour, or else the exercise of invention, or some other form of ability, at some period of their lives by persons actually living, constitutes in justice the sole right to possession, the human race as a whole has no right to profit by any productive effort on the part of past generations; but each generation ought, so far as is practicable, to start afresh in the position of naked savages.

The fact that nobody would maintain a fantastic proposition like this is sufficient to show that, on the tacit admission of everybody, it is impossible to attack interest by insisting on any abstract distinction between incomes that are earned and unearned, and treating the latter as felonious, while holding the former sacred.