EVOLUTION 253 



or buy his neighbour and dispose of his children as he 

 pleased. Would it be held that, under these circumstances, 

 property was more sacred and the independence of the 

 individual more fully recognized ? On the contrary, they 

 were little prized and little protected. But in the degree 

 to which the State became conscious of their worth, to that 

 degree it set itself to render them secure by means of 

 restraining enactments. But the restraint fell upon the 

 abuse, not upon the use, andjtjnade the latter more secure 



by prohibiting the former. Indeed, it seems to me that 

 the prohibitive legislation of any progressive society is 

 just the immediate consequence and expression of this more 

 adequate consciousness of the conditions of individual 

 welfare, and is, in reality, negative only in form. It also 

 seems to me that the public mind of our day is evidently 

 growing more sensitive to the significance of material 

 wealth, just as it has in the past become more sensitive 

 to the meaning and worth of individual life and liberty. 

 With the organization of industry the magnitude of the 

 issues that depend upon the use and abuse of material 

 wealth has become much more evident. The public will 

 is slowly but deliberately setting itself to regulate its 

 material forces. But regulation is not abolition in the 



o 



social sphere, any more than it is in the natural. It is no 

 disadvantage to the good citizen or to society at large that 

 the legislature should more and more effectively block the 

 paths that lead to wrong action. The good citizen does 

 not wish to send women down to work in pits, to employ 

 little children in factories, or to sweat his employees. He 

 is not wronged by any legislation that prohibits these 

 methods of making wealth ; he is rather sustained in his 

 attempt to do what is right ; and, amongst other things, 



