59 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are both the accompaniment and sign of increasing intelligence, this 

 unhappy result follows, that the more intelligent a nation becomes, the 

 greater pain it must suffer from a system which forces its various parts 

 to think and act alike when they would naturally be thinking and 

 acting differently. 



" But if this is so, then there is no such thing possible as represen- 

 tation. If one person can not represent many persons, then adminis- 

 tration of all kinds fails equally in fulfilling a common purpose. All 

 united effort, therefore, becomes impossible." 



No doubt effective personal representation is under any circum- 

 stances a matter of difficulty ; but political organization admits only 

 of the most imperfect form of it, voluntary organization of the most 

 perfect. Under political organization you mix everybody together, 

 like and unlike, and compel them to speak and act through the same 

 representative ; under voluntary organization like attracts like, and 

 those who share the same views form groups and act together, leaving 

 any dissident free to transfer his action and energy elsewhere. The 

 consequence is that under voluntary systems there is continual prog- 

 ress, the constant development of new views, and the action necessary 

 for their practical application ; under political systems, immobility on 

 the part of the administrators, discontented helplessness on the part of 

 those for whom they administer. 



" But still there remain certain things which, however much you 

 may desire to respect personal differences, the state must administer ; 

 such, for example, as civil and criminal law, or the defense of the 

 country." 



The reason why the nation should administer a system of law, or 

 should provide for external defense, and yet abstain from interference 

 in religion and education, will not be recognized until men study with 

 more care the foundations on which the principle of liberty rests. 

 Many persons talk as if the mere fact of men acting together as a 

 nation gave them unlimited rights over each other ; and that they 

 might concede as much or as little liberty as they liked one to the 

 other. The instinct of worship is still so strong upon us that, having 

 nearly worn out our capacity for treating kings and such kind of per- 

 sons as sacred, we are ready to invest a majority of our own selves 

 with the same kind of reverence. Without perceiving how absurd 

 is the contradiction in which we are involved, we are ready to assign 

 to a mass of human beings unlimited rights, while we acknowledge 

 none for the individuals of whom the mass is made up. We owe to 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer the truth of whose writings the world will one 

 day be more prepared to acknowledge, after it has traveled a certain 

 number of times from Bismarckism to communism, and back from 

 communism to Bismarckism the one complete and defensible view 

 as to the relations of the state and the individual. He holds that the 

 great condition regulating human intercourse is the Avidest possible lib- 



