270 THE GOSPEL, AND THE SOCIAL CREED OF SCIENCE. 



upon, is that each one should, in a fully peopled country, 

 be made to know, first the economic and social conditions 

 under which he lives, and then that he should be made 

 to feel that the care of his own case rests with himself, 

 and that he shall be rewarded or punished by just and 

 natural consequences, as he acts in the one way or the 

 opposite, without hindrance from others in seeking his 

 own legitimate good, without demoralizing help from 

 others to shield him from the consequences of his own 

 imprudence. Only by the severe but necessary discipline 

 of reason and self-control applied to each by himself, and 

 by letting the worthless, the imprudent, and the in- 

 corrigible suffer the natural penalties of their own actions, 

 can our society prosper. This is the only final way. 

 Moreover, it is the only just way, and in the end the 

 most merciful and humane way, as any other course 

 would produce a greater quantity of suffering. Finally, 

 it is also the way of Nature wiser than we. It is her 

 way, her lesson everywhere taught, whether a foolish 

 philanthropy or impracticable and Utopian socialism will 

 accept it or no. 



It is the obstinate facts of human nature, and the 

 fixed conditions of the human environment, that on all 

 sides stop the way to the socialist, and make his pro- 

 gramme impracticable and impossible. If men were only 

 higher rational and moral beings, as we can easily con- 

 ceive them to be, and as they tend slowly to become, all 

 poverty and crime, and most of the vices and diseases 

 that now deform and desolate society and individual life, 

 could be extirpated in two or three generations ; but 

 unhappily here lies precisely the difficulty ; for men as a 

 rule are not, even in our boasted civilized communities, 

 very high rational or moral beings, nor are they capable 

 of being quickly made so. Their nature, as already 



