34 Social Environment 



held to be as foolish as questioning the law of 

 gravitation. Feudal conquest may be defended 

 on the same grounds, but let that pass. 



Today, the very fact that the market is held 

 to be controlled by natural law places it under 

 suspicion, for it is now seen that society itself 

 is essentially a thwarting and molding of 

 natural laws into harmony with social ideals. 

 Society involves the supremacy of intelligence 

 over matter, and of social ideals over instincts. 

 Hence, the modern world is gradually moving 

 to hedge the market about with various re- 

 strictions which serve to protect the economic 

 weak against the economic strong. Further, it 

 can readily be seen in history that the ideal of 

 justice thought to have been discovered in the 

 laissez-faire philosophy was nothing more than 

 a revision of the ancient commercialism that 

 like a cancer has time and again cut into the 

 living tissue of social organization to build its 

 false aristocracies. It was the commercialism 

 symbolized by Baal worship that awoke the 

 inspiring protests of the Hebrew prophets; it 

 was free contract under a landed aristocracy 

 that was destroying the early Greeks, until wise 

 legislation diverted the social energies into the 

 channels of the Periclean age. The evils grow- 



