SCIENCE IN " BONDAGE" 81 



in the act. I may not, if I am a small and active 

 boy, make a slide in the public street in frosty 

 weather, unless I am prepared as the small boy 

 usually is to run the gauntlet of the police. In a 

 thousand ways my freedom, or what I call my 

 freedom, is interfered with : it is the price which 

 I pay for being one item of a social organism and 

 for being in turn protected against others, who, 

 in virtue of that protection, are in their turn 

 deprived of what they might call their liberty. 



No one can have failed to observe that this 

 interference with personal liberty becomes greater 

 day by day. It is a tendency of modern govern- 

 ments, based presumably upon increased experi- 

 ence, to increase these protective regulations. 

 Thus we have laws against adulteration of food, 

 against the placing of buildings concerned with 

 obnoxious trades in positions where people will 

 be inconvenienced by them. We make persons 

 suffering from infectious diseases isolate them- 

 selves, and if they cannot do this at home, we 

 make them go to the fever hospital. Further, 

 we insist upon the doctor, whose position re- 

 sembles that of a confessor, breaking his obliga- 

 tion of professional secrecy and informing the 

 authorities as to the illness of his patient. We 

 interfere with the liberty of men and women to 

 work as long as they like or to make their children 

 labour for excessive hours. We insist upon 

 dangerous machinery being fenced in. In a thou- 

 sand ways we the State interfere with the 

 liberty of our fellows. Finally, when the needs of 

 the community are most pressing we interfere 

 6 



