MEASUREMENTS 215 



The same inability to predict the future runs through 

 all branches of subjective inquiry, and extends to all periods, 

 near or remote. Whether it is the race, or the nation, or 

 the individual; the effects of legislation or variations in 

 taste ; we are equally unable to trace with any approach to 

 scientific accuracy what will be the facts at any future 

 moment, near or remote. We need feel no surprise that, 

 in their efforts to cure specific evils, legislators have con 

 tinually caused collateral evils they never looked for. No 

 Carlyle s wisest man, or any body of such, could avoid causing 

 them. . . , On all sides are well-meant measures producing 

 unforeseen mischiefs a licensing law that promotes the 

 adulteration of beer, a ticket-of-leave system that en 

 courages men to commit crime, a police regulation that 

 forces street huxters into the workhouse. And then, in 

 addition to the obvious and proximate evils, come the remote 

 and less distinguishable ones, which, could we estimate their 

 accumulated result, we should probably find even more 

 serious. 1 The acutest intellect of his time warned the nation, 

 a century and a half ago, that national bankruptcy, either 

 voluntary or enforced by conquest from abroad, was the 

 certain consequence of public debt, and that the event, 

 which was not even then very remote, might be foreseen 

 by reason almost as clearly as anything that lay within 

 the womb of time. In order to deliver such prophecies 

 as these, no more is necessary than merely to be in one s 

 senses, and free from the influence of popular madness 

 and delusion. 2 



Forecasts of the ultimate end of humanity are free from 

 the wholesome restraint of a test by events, but discredit 

 one another by their bewildering contradictions. One assures 

 us that it is the complete subordination of the individual 

 to the state ; another that the state will continue to exist 

 only in so far as it serves the interests of the individual ; 

 another tells us that the end towards which history neces 

 sarily moves is the consciousness the human spirit has of 



1 H. Spencer, Westminster Review, July, 1853 (Over Legislation). 



2 Hume, On Public Credit, Essays, I. 374. (Green & Grose.) 



