230 THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE v 



and I might plead that I am robbed to smooth the 

 way and lighten the darkness of other people. 

 But I am afraid the parochial authorities would 

 not let me off on this plea; and I must confess I 

 do not see why they should. 



I cannot speak of my own knowledge, but I 

 have every reason to believe that I came into this 

 world a small reddish person, certainly without a 

 gold spoon in my mouth, and in fact with no dis- 

 cernible abstract or concrete " rights " or property 

 of any description. If a foot was not set upon 

 me, at once, as a squalling nuisance, it was either 

 the natural affection of those about me, which I 

 certainly had done nothing to deserve, or the fear 

 of the law which, ages before my birth, was pain- 

 fully built up by the society into which I intruded, 

 that prevented that catastrophe. If I was nour- 

 ished, cared for, taught, saved from the vagabond- 

 age of a wastrel, I certainly am not aware that I 

 did anything to deserve those advantages. And, 

 if I possess anything now, it strikes me that, 

 though I may have fairly earned my day's wages 

 for my day's work, and may justly call them my 

 property — yet, without that organization of soci- 

 ety, created out of the toil and blood of long gen- 

 erations before my time, I should probably have 

 had nothing but a flint axe and an indifferent hut 

 to call my own; and even those would be mine only 

 so long as no stronger savage came my way. 



So that if society, having, quite gratuitously, 



