EDITOR'S TABLE. 



269 



and accomplishes it to a measura- 

 ble extent. Without competition in 

 some form there would be no adap- 

 tation, and society would relapse 

 into a state of chaos. If there is 

 adaptation to-day throughout the 

 whole range of the organic world, 

 it is because competition has been at 

 work from the very beginning of 

 things. It is not necessary to deny 

 that competition has been and is at- 

 tended by many evils; but it will be 

 found on examination that these 

 evils are generally of a character to 

 impair the competition and render it 

 more or less illusory. The trouble 

 in these cases is not with the prin- 

 ciple of competition, but with the 

 frauds of one kind or another by 

 which it has been vitiated — acts that 

 are in direct violation of the golden 

 rule, because they are such as no 

 man would wish to have perpetrated 

 on himself. As applied to competi- 

 tion, the golden rule demands an 

 honorable observance of the condi- 

 tions, expressed and implied, of every 

 competition : it requires that every 

 competitor shall do by every other 

 as he would himself be done by. 



Apart, however, from fraudulent 

 competition it may be admitted that 

 in some cases parties compete who 

 might well refrain from doing so. 

 There is a passage in Mr. Spen- 

 cer's Principles of Morality (vol. ii, 

 page 282) which bears directly on 

 this point. "In its application," he 

 says, " to cases of this kind the popu- 

 lar maxim, 'Live and let live,' may 

 be accepted as embodying a truth. 

 Any one who, by command of great 

 capital or superior business capacity, 

 is enabled to beat others who carry 

 on the same business, is enjoined by 

 the principle of negative beneficence 

 to restrain his business activities 

 when his own wants and those of his 

 belongings have been abundantly 

 filled, so that others, occupied as he 

 is, may fulfill their wants also. 



though in smaller measure." There 

 is something, however, to be said on 

 behalf of those who do not "restrain 

 their business activities " at the point 

 mentioned by Mr. Spencer. In the 

 first place, the capitalist need not 

 waste his money on senseless luxury 

 and ostentation, but may em])loy it 

 in jiidicious enterprises for the gen- 

 eral good. In the second place, by 

 staying in business he gives the pub- 

 lic the benefit of his superior meth- 

 ods, instead of leaving the field to 

 those who, on the whole, would not, 

 it may be assumed, carry on business 

 so satisfactorily — possibly not deal 

 as generously or humanely with the 

 persons whom they employ as he is 

 able to do with those whom he em- 

 ploys. Evidently, it is very difiicult 

 to draw a line at the exact point 

 where a given individual should 

 withdraw from competition. The 

 question for the individual concerned 

 is how he can best discharge his ob- 

 ligations to society — how he can do 

 most good to society — and it seems 

 to us that, in some cases at least, this 

 requirement would most fully be 

 met by his continuing to direct the 

 business which he has organized on 

 a sound basis, and is carrying on to 

 the satisfaction and benefit of a large 

 portion of the public. The golden 

 rule — the spirit of it, at least — is not 

 violated so long as, to the best of a 

 man's judgment, what he does is, in 

 the widest sense, for the public good. 

 We fail, therefore, to find any radical 

 contradiction, or indeed any contra- 

 diction at all, between the principle 

 of competition and the maxim to 

 which we have so often referred. 

 We have only to think for one mo- 

 ment of what the world would be in 

 the complete absence of competition 

 — in other words, in the absence of. 

 all means for selecting the fit and 

 rejecting the unfit or the less fit — in 

 order to see that competition in itself 

 is not and can not be an evil. That 



