5 oo POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



treated of." Even if considered apart, however, the doctrine set forth 

 in this division has no such interpretation as that perversely put upon 

 it. It is represented as nothing but an assertion of the claims of the 

 individual to what benefits he can gain in the struggle for existence ; 

 whereas it is in far larger measure a specification of the equitable 

 limits to his activities, and of the restraints which must be imposed 

 on him. I am not aware that any one has more emphatically 

 asserted that society in its corporate capacity must exercise a rigorous 

 control over its individual members, to the extent needful for pre- 

 venting trespasses one upon another. No one has more frequently 

 or strongly denounced governments for the laxity with which they 

 fulfil this duty. So far from being, as some have alleged, an ad- 

 vocacy of the claims of the strong against the weak, it is much more 

 an insistence that the weak shall be guarded against the strong, so 

 that they may suffer no greater evils than their relative weakness 

 itself involves. And no one has more vehemently condemned that 

 " miserable laissez-faire which calmly looks on while men ruin them- 

 selves in trying to enforce by law their equitable claims " {Ethics, 

 271). 



Now that the remaining parts, treating of Beneficence, have been 

 added to the rest, the perverse misinterpretation continues in face of 

 direct disproofs. At the very outset of the Ethics it is said : 



" There remains a further advance not yet even hinted. For be- 

 yond so behaving that each achieves his ends without preventing 

 others from achieving their ends, the members of a society may give 

 mutual help in the achievement of ends." 6. 



And in a subsequent chapter it is said that 



" the limit of evolution of conduct is consequently not reached until, 

 beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are 

 spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of others." " It may be 

 shown that the form of nature which thus to justice adds beneficence, 

 is one which adaptation to the social state produces." 54. 



These are texts which in Parts V. and VI., dealing with Beneficence, 

 Negative and Positive, are fully expanded. Having first distin- 

 guished between " kinds of altruism," and contended that the kind 

 we call justice has to be enforced by the incorporated society, the 

 State, while the kind we call beneficence must be left to individuals, 

 and after pointing out the grave evils which result if this distinction 

 is not maintained, I have described in detail the limits to men's 

 actions which negative beneficence enjoins. Then come two chap- 

 ters, entitled " Restraints on Free Competition " and " Restraints on 



