POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 213 



exists apart from human labour ; it is the necessary antecedent 

 of labour ; and it furnishes the materials on which labour is 

 employed. The only indispensable form of capital — vital capital 

 — cannot be produced by human labour. All that man can do 

 is to favour its formation by the real producers. There is no 

 intrinsic relation between the amount of labour bestowed on an 

 article and its value in exchange. The claim of labour to the 

 total result of operations which are rendered possible only by 

 capital is simply an a priori iniquity." 



The fourth and last essay in the series, " Government : 

 Anarchy or Regimentation," appeared in May (Coll. 

 Essays, i, p. 383), and here the results of putting into 

 practice extrepie individualism on the one hand, or 

 extreme socialism on the other, are vividly sketched, 

 and the foundations of the two critically examined. The 

 previous essays had evoked numerous criticisms of the 

 most diverse kind, and the socialists conceived them to 

 be written with the intention of supporting the existing 

 state of things, and opposing progress. In the essay on 

 " Government," this last charge is thus answered : — 



'* Those who have had the patience to follow me to the end 

 will, I trust, have become aware that my aim has been altogether 

 different. Even the best of modern civilizations appears to me 

 to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any 

 worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability. I do not 

 hesitate to express my opinion that, if there is no hope of a 

 large improvement of the condition of the greater part of the 

 human family ; if it is true that the increase of knowledge, the 

 winning of a greater dominion over Nature which is its conse- 

 quence, and the wealth which follows upon that dominion, are 

 to make no difference in the extent and tiie intensity of Want, 

 with its concomi'ant physical and moral degradation, among the 

 masses of the people, I should hail the advent of some kindly 

 comet, which would sweep the whole affair away, as a desirable 

 consummation. What profits it to the human Prometheus that 

 he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, and that the 

 spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture of 



