SUGGESTIONS ON SOCIAL SUBJECTS. 165 



Chapter V. " That we must have Few Men if we want Strong 

 Men." " Undoubtedly the man who possesses capital has a great ad- 

 vantage over the man who has no capital, in all the struggle for ex- 

 istence. . . . If it were not so, capital would not be formed. Capital 

 is only formed by self-denial, and if the possession of it did not se- 

 cure advantages and superiorities of a high order, men would never 

 submit to what is necessary to get it. . . . The man who has capital 

 has secured his future, won leisure which he can employ in winning 

 secondary objects of necessity and advantage, and emancipated himself 

 from those things in life which are gross and belittling. The posses- 

 sion of capital is, therefore, an indispensable prerequisite of educa- 

 tional, scientific, and moral goods. This is not saying that a man in 

 the narrowest circumstances may not be a good man. It is saying 

 that the extension and elevation of all the moral and metaphysical 

 interests of the race are conditioned on that extension of civilization 

 of which capital is the prerequisite, and that he who has capital can 

 participate in and move along with the highest developments of his 

 time. Hence it appears that the man who has his self-denial before 

 him, however good may be his intention, can not be as the man who 

 has his self-denial behind him. Some seem to think that this is very 

 unjust, but they get their notions of justice from some occult source 

 of inspiration, not from observing the facts of this world as it has 

 been made and exists. 



The author expresses the opinion, in Chapter VI, " That He who 



WOULD BE WELL TAKEN CARE OF MUST TAKE CARE OF HiMSELF," and 



in enforcing this idea he observes : ** The fashion of the time is to 

 run to government boards, commissions, and inspectors, to set right 

 everything which is wrong. No experience seems to damp the faith 

 of our public in these instrumentalities. The English liberals in the 

 middle of this century seemed to have full grasp of the principle of 

 liberty, and to be fixed and established in favor of non-interference. 

 Since they have come to power, however, they have adopted the old 

 instrumentalities, and have greatly multiplied them since they have 

 had a great number of reforms to carry out. They seem to think that 

 interference is good if only they interfere. In this country the party 

 which is * in ' always interferes, and the party which is * out ' favors 

 non-interference. The system of interference is a complete failure of 

 the end it aims at, and sooner or later will fall of its own expense and 

 be swept away. The two notions — one to regulate things by a com- 

 mittee of control, and the other to let things regulate themselves by 

 the conflict of interests between free men — are diametrically opposed ; 

 and the former is corrupting to free institutions, because men who are 

 taught to expect government inspectors to come and take care of 

 them lose all true education in liberty. If we have been all wrong for 

 the last three hundred years in aiming at a fuller realization of indi- 

 vidual liberty as a condition of general and widely diffused happiness, 



