606 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



An entire loss of freedom will thus be the fate of those 

 who do not deserve the freedom they possess. They have 

 been weighed in the balances and found wanting: having 

 neither the required idea nor the required sentiment. Only 

 a nature which will sacrifice everything to defend personal 

 liberty of action, and is eager to defend the like liberties of 

 action of others, can permanently maintain free institutions. 

 While not tolerating aggression upon himself, he must have 

 sympathies such as will not tolerate aggression upon his 

 fellows be they fellows of the same race or of other 

 races. As shown in multitudinous ways throughout this 

 work, a society organized for coercive action against other 

 societies, must subject its members to coercion. In propor 

 tion as men s claims are trampled upon by it externally, will 

 men s claims be trampled upon by it internally. History has 

 familiarized the truth that tyrant and slave are men of the 

 same kind differently placed. Be it in the ancient Egyptian 

 king subject to a rigid routine of daily life enforced by 

 priests, be it in the Roman patrician, master of bondmen and 

 himself in bondage to the State, be it in the feudal lord 

 possessing his serfs and himself possessed by his suzerain, be 

 it in the modern artizan yielding up to his union his right 

 to make contracts and maltreating his fellow who will not, 

 we equally see that those who disregard others individuali 

 ties must in one way or other sacrifice their own. Men thus 

 constituted cannot maintain free institutions. They must 

 live under some system of coercive government; and when 

 old forms of it lose their strength must generate new forms. 



Even apart from special evidence, this general conclusion 

 is forced on us by contemplating the law of rhythm: a law 

 manifested throughout all things from the inconceivably 

 rapid oscillations of a unit of ether to the secular perturba 

 tions of the solar system. For, as shown in First Principles 

 rhythm everywhere results from antagonist forces. As 

 thus caused it is displayed throughout social phenomena, 

 from the hourly rises and falls of Stock Exchange prices to 



