VIEWS OF RUNNING WATER. 645 



If the political meddler could be induced to contemplate the 

 essential meaning of his plan, he would be paralyzed by the sense 

 of his own temerity. He proposes to suspend, in some way or 

 degree, that process by which all life has been evolved to divorce 

 conduct from consequence. While the law of life at large is to be 

 partially broken by him, he would more especially break that 

 form of it which results from the associated state. Traversing by 

 his interference that principle of justice common to all living 

 things, he would traverse more especially the principle of human 

 justice, which requires that each shall enjoy the benefits achieved 

 within the needful limits of action : he would redistribute the bene- 

 fits. Those results of accumulated experiences in each civilized 

 society which, registered in laws, have, age after age, established 

 men's rights with increasing clearness, he proposes here or there to 

 ignore, and to trespass on the rights. And, whereas in the course 

 of centuries, the ruling powers of societies, while maintaining men's 

 rights against one another more effectually, have also themselves 

 receded from aggressions on those rights, the legislative schemer 

 would invert this course, and decrease that freedom of action 

 which has been increasing. Thus his policy, setting at naught the 

 first principle of life at large and the first principle of social life 

 in particular, ignores also the generalized results of observations 

 and experiments gathered during thousands of years. And all 

 with what warrant ? All for certain reasons of apparent policy, 

 every one of which we have found to be untrustworthy. 



But why needs there any detailed refutation ? What can be a 

 more extreme absurdity than that of proposing to improve social 

 life by breaking the fundamental law of social life ? 



I 



VIEWS OF RUNNING WATER. 



By M. J. PICCAED. 



F we ask a person who has not thought about the matter to 

 represent with a pencil, from memory, a stream or fall of 

 water, in nine cases out of ten he will return the paper after hav- 

 ing timidly ventured upon a few parallel scratches, looking as 

 much as anything else like the ruts in a road or the hairs of a 

 horse's tail. Yet we see liquids every day flowing along the 

 gutter, and from bottles or pitchers ; and we have all played near 

 brooks and cascades. The persons who trace the parallel lines we 

 have spoken of suppose they are representing the path traveled 

 by the particles of water that is, a movement, an immaterial 

 thing which by its very nature defies all graphic representation. 

 It is true that a luminous point in very rapid motion leaves on 

 the retina the impression of a line. We are thus authorized to 



vol. xxxix. 47 



