THE GREAT POLITICAL SUPERSTITION, 311 



some obvious impediment, things can be done this way or that way ; 

 and no question is put whether there is either agreement or conflict 

 with the normal working of things. 



The foregoing discussions have, I think, shown that the dictates of 

 utility, and, consequently, the proper actions of governments, are not 

 to be settled by inspection of facts on the surface, and acceptance of 

 their prima facie meanings ; but are to be settled by reference to, and 

 deduction from, fundamental facts. The fundamental facts to which 

 all rational judgments of utility must go back, are the facts that life 

 consists in, and is maintained by, certain activities ; and that among 

 men in a society, these activities, necessarily becoming mutually lim- 

 ited, are to be carried on by each within the limits thence arising, and 

 not carried on beyond those limits : the maintenance of the limits be- 

 coming, by consequence, the function of the agency which regulates 

 society. If each, having freedom to use his powers up to the bounds 

 fixed by the like freedom of others, obtains from his fellow-men as 

 much for his services as they find them worth in comparison with the 

 services of others — if contracts uniformly fulfilled bring to each the 

 share thus determined, and he is left secure in person and possessions 

 to satisfy his wants with the proceeds ; then there is maintained the 

 vital principle alike of individual life and of social life. Further, there 

 is maintained the vital principle of social progress ; inasmuch as un- 

 der such conditions, the individuals of more worth will prosper and 

 multiply more than those of less worth. So that utility, not as em- 

 pirically estimated, but as rationally determined, enjoins this mainte- 

 nance of individual rights ; and, by implication, negatives any course 

 which traverses them. 



Here, then, we reach the ultimate interdict against meddling legis- 

 lation. Reduced to its lowest terms, every proposal to interfere with 

 citizens' activities further than by enforcing their mutual limitations, 

 is a proposal to improve life by breaking through the fundamental 

 conditions to life. When some are prevented from buying beer that 

 others may be prevented from getting drunk, those who make the law 

 assume that more good than evil will result from interference with 

 the normal relation between conduct and consequences, alike in the 

 few ill-regulated and the many well-regulated. A government which 

 takes fractions of the incomes of multitudinous citizens for the pur- 

 pose of sending to the colonies some who have not prospered here, or 

 for building better industrial dwellings, or for making public libraries 

 and public museums, etc., etc., takes for granted that, not only proxi- 

 mately but ultimately, increased general happiness will result from 

 transgressing the essential requirement to general happiness — the re- 

 quirement that each shall enjoy all those means to happiness which 

 his actions, carried on without aggression on others, have brought him. 

 In other cases we do not thus let the immediate blind us to the remote. 

 We do not when asserting the sacredness of property against private 



