624 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G (l.). 



In primitive or sparsely settled communities eacli individual 

 deals with waste material according as his own fancy or convenience 

 suggests. The growth of population creates new conditions, which 

 make uniformity desirable, and disposal with due regard for the health 

 of the community essential. Therefore, the individual can no longer 

 have his own dust-heap up against his own door. 



In the industrial sphere modern methods of production have 

 created new conditions. Where hundreds of persons whose duties are 

 to attend to machines are grouped under one roof, it is found that the 

 right of the employer to pay such wages as he pleases, to work his hands 

 such hours as he thinks fit, under unhealthy sanitary conditions, and 

 danger from unguarded machinery, particularly with regard to women 

 and children, were no longer compatible with the general welfare of the 

 community. His freedom of action has been restrained, and this 

 restraint is extended as the development of the methods of production 

 calls for. 



Such laws were quite unnecessary under primitive conditions of 

 production, but very few will deny that they are very necessary to-day, 

 although at the time they were first introduced the outcry against them 

 was very considerable. 



These two instances of changing conditions necessitating further 

 State interference might be multiplied almost indefinitely, but they 

 will serve sufficiently to illustrate a most interesting and important 

 phase in social evolution. 



Another point here requires notice. Not only is the sphere of 

 unregulated individual activities curtailed by the increasing com- 

 plexity of modern society, but also by the gradual modification of 

 those crude conceptions of the functions of the State and its relation 

 to the individual which formerly were current. The conception of the 

 State as a distinct entity, which exists for the protection of the indi- 

 vidual, is only of recent date. The idea that there is a general con- 

 sciousness as well as an individual consciousness, a national as well as 

 individual life, was only possible with a wider diffusion of knowledge 

 and increased facilities for intercourse. 



It has followed from these things that the State now either does 

 itself, or compels the citizens to do, many things which formerly he was 

 free to do or leave undone, as he pleased. Education is a good example 

 of this new field of collective effort. It is to be noted that in such matters 

 the State does not merely interfere with individual enterprise ; it makes 

 compulsory actions which were formerly optional. A parent must 

 send his child to school. A citizen must pay his quota towards educating 

 all children, whether he has children of his own or not, and irrespective 

 of whether he pays for their education by some private teacher. 



The modern State, considered as an organism, exhibits those marks 

 which invariably accompany higher development. It responds more 

 readily to stimuh, it specialises functions, and it has evolved new 

 organs, or, what is the same thing, rudimentary organs have developed 

 until they perform functions entirely new, or formerly very imperfectly 

 performed by the individual. 



