228 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE v 



amount of freedom which incorporate society may 

 fitly leave to its members is not a fixed quantity, 

 to be determined a priori by deduction from the 

 fiction called &quot; natural rights &quot; ; but that it must 

 be determined by, and vary with, circumstances. 

 I conceive it to be demonstrable that the higher 

 and the more complex the organization of the 

 social body, the more closely is the life of each 

 member bound up with that of the whole ; and 

 the larger becomes the category of acts which 

 cease to be merely self-regarding, and which in 

 terfere with the freedom of others more or less 

 seriously. 



If a squatter, living ten miles away from any 

 neighbour, chooses to burn his house down to get 

 rid of vermin, there may be no necessity (in the 

 absence of insurance offices) that the law should 

 interfere with his freedom of action ; his act can 

 hurt nobody but himself. But, if the dweller in 

 a street chooses to do the same thing, the State 

 very properly makes such a proceeding a crime, 

 and punishes it as such. He does meddle with 

 his neighbour s freedom, and that seriously. So 

 it might, perhaps, be a tenable doctrine, that it 

 would be needless, and even tyrannous, to make 

 education compulsory in a sparse agricultural 

 population, living in abundance on the produce of 

 its own soil ; but, in a densely populated manu 

 facturing country, struggling for existence with 

 competitors, every ignorant person tends to 



