EVOLUTION 249 



a municipality contemplates a new enterprise. It would 

 be adopted without hesitation in all cases where there is 

 reasonable security that the civic machinery is likely to 

 be a better instrument than private enterprise. 



No doubt every such new social activity implies a certain 

 dislocation ; and it must also be confessed that the dislo- 

 cation is not in every respect analogous to that which takes 

 place when a new private competitor in business enters the 

 field. In a word, the principle we have laid down cannot 

 be acted upon abstractly. The amount of dislocation in- 

 volved in a new civic enterprise might make it imprudent 

 in one community when it is not in another. In one city 

 voluntary combination, or private enterprise, might clean 

 the streets or run the tramways better than the municipality. 

 In another, owing either to the defects of private endeavour 

 or to the great practical intelligence of the civic authorities, 

 the municipality might be intrusted with these functions. 

 And the same truth holds, mutatis mutandis^ as regards 

 the State. But the essential point is this that there are 

 hardly any limits that can be set off-hand to the functions 

 of the city or the State. They may be very narrow, and 

 they may be very wide ; but they can always be extended 

 pan passu with the capacity of the community to evolve 

 good servants. A city in which the general intelligence 

 is high, and which can recognize and rightly appraise prac- 

 tical wisdom and moral integrity in its officials and agents, 

 may with advantage undertake functions which, in a com- 

 munity where the intelligence and the morality are lower, 

 would only lead to disaster. Once more we see, in fact, 

 that the efficacy of the social will depends in an absolute 

 way on the intelligence and probity of the private will. 

 There is no way of enlarging the functions of the public 



