54 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. II 



went about with a pistol threatening my life ; if he is to 

 be allowed to let his children go un vaccinated, he might 

 as well be allowed to leave strychnine lozenges about in 

 the way of mine; and if he brings them up untaught 

 and untrained to earn their living, he is doing his best to 

 restrict my freedom, by increasing the burden of taxation 

 for the support of gaols and workhouses, which I have to 

 pay. 



The higher the state ot civilisation, the more com- 

 pletely do the actions of one member of the social body 

 influence all the rest, and the less possible is it for any 

 one man to do a wrong thing without interfering, more 

 or less, with the freedom of all his fellow-citizens. So 

 that, even upon the narrowest view of the functions of 

 the State, it must be admitted to have wider powers than 

 the advocates of the police theory are disposed to admit. 



This leads to a criticism of Mr. Spencer's elaborate 

 comparison of the body politic to the body physical, 

 a comparison vitiated by the fact that "among the 

 higher physiological organisms there is none which is 

 developed by the conjunction of a number of primi- 

 tively independent existences into a complete whole." 



The process of social organisation appears to be com- 

 parable, not so much to the process of organic develop- 

 ment, as to the synthesis of the chemist, by which 

 independent elements are gradually built up into complex 

 aggregations in which each element retains an inde- 

 pendent individuality, though held in subordination to 

 the whole. 



It is permissible to quote a few more sentences 

 from this address for the sake of their freshness, or 

 as illustrating the writer's ideas. 



Discussing toleration, "I cannot discover that 



