Contrary to the aversion shown by earlier political economists, Mill views the stationary state—where the growth of capital and population ceases due to the tendency of profits to a minimum—as a “very considerable improvement on our present condition.”

• He is “not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind.”
• A stationary state of population and wealth does not imply a “stationary state of human improvement.” With the art of “getting on” no longer all-engrossing, society would have the room and incentive to cultivate the “Art of Living.” Industrial improvements would finally serve their “legitimate effect, that of abridging labour,” becoming the “common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot.”