SOCIETY DEPENDS ON MAN 289 



take a tolerably true measure of themselves are tempted 

 to retreat from the turmoil of public affairs and, like 

 Voltaire's Candide^ to " cultivate their gardens." 



But this attitude also rests on a fallacy. Stable and vast 

 as is the modern State, powerful and complex as are the 

 forces which collide and combine within it, they do not 

 constitute a natural system. There are laws of society 

 laws of its economic failure or prosperity, laws of its politi- 

 cal or moral growth and decay, laws as sure as those which 

 guide the stars. But they are not physical laws, which 

 man cannot change or modify, but controls by obeying. 

 ThejState owns no quality, its laws no meaning or power, 

 except thatwhich is derived from and maintained by the 

 will, the emotionSjjhe intelligence of individuals. It can- 

 not exist for a momem^except within this rational medium. 



We have spoken of the State as a most rich inheritance, 

 the accumulated gain of the practical wisdom of many ages 

 of men who have shed their lives like forest leaves to make 

 the_soil on which the good customs and institutions of^ 

 modernjaociety grow. No one can measu^ejhe^worth of _ 

 _the_ciyilized_Sta_te, many as are the defects and deep as are 

 die wrongs that still fincLharbour within it. No effort of 

 reason_can set forth, one by one, the elements of social 

 goocljhat intervenebetween the individual born in such 

 a State and the_ unimaginable limitations of a life of_ 

 savagery. 



Nevertheless, there is not one item of all these elements 

 which can become a man's own, except in so far as by the 



exercise of his own intelligence and will he gains it for 



himself. WIan isjiot a passive_recipient of any spiritual 



gift. We cannot inherit nor bequeath virtues, much as 

 we might often desire to do so, either as children of 



