84,6* POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



though by spontaneous co-operation of citizens have been formed 

 canals, railways, telegraphs, and other means of communication 

 and distribution ; the natural forces which have done all this are 

 ignored as of no account in political thinking. Our immense 

 manufacturing system with its multitudinous inventions, supply- 

 ing both home and foreign consumers, and the immense mercan- 

 tile marine by which its products are taken all over the globe and 

 other products brought back, have naturally and not artificially 

 originated. That transformation by which, in thousands of years, 

 men's occupations have been so specialized that each, aiding to 

 satisfy some small division of his fellow citizen's needs has his 

 own needs satisfied by the work of hundreds of others, has taken 

 place without design and unobserved. Knowledge developing 

 into science, which has become so vast in mass that no one can 

 grasp a tithe of it, and which now guides productive activities at 

 large, has resulted from the workings of individuals prompted not 

 by the ruling agency but by their own inclinations. So, too, has 

 been created the still vaster mass distinguished as literature, yield- 

 ing the gratifications filling so large a space in our lives. Nor 

 is it otherwise with the literature of the hour: That ubiquitous 

 journalism which provides satisfactions for men's more urgent 

 mental wants, has resulted from the activities of citizens sever- 

 ally pursuing private benefits. And supplementing these come 

 the innumerable companies, associations, unions, societies, clubs, 

 subserving enterprise, philanthropy, culture, art, amusement ; as 

 well as the multitudinous institutions annually receiving mil- 

 lions by endowments and subscriptions : all of them arising from 

 the unforced co-operations of citizens. And yet so hypnotized 

 are nearly all by fixedly contemplating the doings of ministers 

 and parliaments, that they have no eyes for this marvelous or- 

 ganization which has been growing for thousands of years with- 

 out governmental help nay, indeed, in spite of governmental 

 hindrances. For in agriculture, manufactures, commerce, bank- 

 ing, journalism, immense injuries have been done by laws in- 

 juries afterward healed by social forces which have thereupon 

 set up afresh the normal courses of growth. So unconscious are 

 men of the life of the social organism that though the spontane- 

 ous actions of its units, each seeking livelihood, generate streams 

 of food which touch at their doors every hour though the water 

 for the morning bath, the lights for their rooms, the fires in their 

 grates, the bus or tram which takes them to the City, the busi- 

 ness they carry on (made possible by the distributing system 

 they share in), the evening " Special " they glance at, the theater 

 or concert to which they presently go, and the cab home, all re- 

 sult from the unprompted workings of this organized humanity, 

 they remain blind. Though by its vital activities capital is 



