608 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



For it is clear that, other things equal, a society in which 

 life, liberty, and property, are secure, and all interests justly 

 regarded, must prosper more than one in which they are not ; 

 and, consequently, among competing industrial societies, 

 there must be a gradual replacing of those in which personal 

 rights are imperfectly maintained, by those in which they arc 

 perfectly maintained. So that by survival of the fittest must 

 be produced a social type in which individual claims, con 

 sidered as sacred, are trenched on by the State no further 

 than is requisite to pay the cost of maintaining them, or 

 rather, of arbitrating among them. For the aggressiveness of 

 nature fostered by militancy having died out, the corporate 

 function becomes that of deciding between those conflicting 

 claims, the equitable adjustment of which is not obvious to 

 the persons concerned. 



f)65. With the absence of need for that corporate action 

 by which the efforts of the whole society may be utilized for 

 war, there goes the absence of need for a despotic controlling- 

 agency. 



Not only is such an agency unnecessary, but it cannot 

 exist, For since, as we see, it is an essential requirement of 

 the industrial type, that the individuality of each man shall 

 have the fullest play compatible with the like play of other 

 men s individualities, despotic control, showing itself as it 

 must by otherwise restricting men s individualities, is neces 

 sarily excluded. Indeed, by his mere presence an autocratic 

 ruler is an aggressor on citizens. Actually or potentially 

 exercising power not given by them, he in so far restrains 

 their wills more than they would be restrained by mutual 

 limitation merely. 



565. Such control as is required under the industrial 

 type, can be exercised only by an appointed agency for ascer 

 taining and executing the average will ; and a representative 

 agency is the one best fitted for doing this. 



