THE LIMITS OF STATE-DUTIES. 639 



THE LIMITS OF STATE-DUTIES.* 



By HERBERT SPENCER. 



OF the many reasons for restricting the range of governmental 

 actions, the strongest remains to be named. The end which 

 the statesman should keep in view as higher than all other ends, 

 is the formation of character. And if there is entertained a right 

 conception of the character which should be formed, and of the 

 means by which it may be formed, the exclusion of multiplied 

 State-agencies is necessarily implied. 



" How so ? " will doubtless be the exclamation of many. " Is 

 not the formation of character the end to which much of the legis- 

 lation we advocate is directed ? Do we not contend that an all- 

 important part of the State's business is the making of good 

 citizens ? and are not our school-systems, our free libraries, our 

 sanitary arrangements, our gymnasia, etc., devised with the view 

 of improving their natures ? " 



To this interrogative reply, uttered with an air of astonish- 

 ment and an implied conviction that nothing remains to be said, 

 the answer is that everything depends on the goodness of the 

 ideal entertained and the appropriateness of the appliances for 

 realizing it ; and that both of them are radically wrong. 



These paragraphs sufficiently indicate the antagonist views to 

 be here discussed. Let us now enter on the discussion of them 

 systematically 



Upward from hordes of savages to civilized nations, countless 

 examples show that to make an efficient warrior preparation is 

 needed. Practice in the use of weapons begins in boyhood ; and 

 throughout youth the ambition is to be a good marksman with 

 the bow and arrow, to throw the javelin or the boomerang with 

 force and precision, and to become an adept in defense as well as 

 in attack. At the same time speed and agility are effectually cul- 

 tivated, and there are trials of strength. More relevant still to 

 the end in view comes the discipline in endurance ; sometimes 

 going to the extent of submission to torture. In brief, each male 

 of the tribe is so educated as to fit him for the purposes of the 

 tribe to fit him for helping it in maintaining its existence, or 

 subjugating its neighbors, or both. Though not a State-education 

 in the modern sense, the education is one prescribed by custom 

 and enforced by public opinion. That it is the business of the 

 society to mold the individual is asserted tacitly if not openly. 



With that social progress which forms larger communities 



* From Justice, being Part IV of the Principles of Ethics, now in press of D. Apple- 

 ton & Co. 



