22 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXV. No. 627 



Smith it seemed self-evident that a man 

 served society best who served himself 

 best — though he vrould certainly have ad- 

 mitted that the rule had exceptions in the 

 case of thieves, assassins and others v?ho 

 are obviously enemies of society. But the 

 extent to which the classical 'economic 

 harmonies' were pushed by some writers, 

 Avhile not including such persons as thieves 

 among beneficent workers, was, neverthe- 

 less, astonishing. Herbert Spencer's advo- 

 cacy of freedom of private coinage is well 

 Imown, though any one familiar with 

 'Gresham's law' knows how chimerical 

 siich an institution would be. A still more 

 astonishing suggestion is that which Moli- 

 nari is reputed to have made at one time, 

 namely, that even the police function of 

 government should be left to private hands, 

 that police corps should be simply volun- 

 tary vigilance committees, somewhat like 

 the old-fashioned fire companies, and that 

 rivalry between these companies would se- 

 cure better service than that now obtained 

 through government police ! 



If we stop to classify the social effects of 

 individual actions, we shall find that they 

 fall into three groups: (1) those actions 

 which benefit the individual himself and 

 have no effect upon others; (2) those ac- 

 tions which benefit the individual and at 

 the same time benefit society; (3) those 

 actions which benefit the individual while 

 at the same time they injure society. It 

 is the third group which the laissez faire 

 doctrinaires have overlooked, and especially 

 that part of the third group in which the 

 injury to society outweighs the benefit to 

 the individual. As Huxley said:^ 



Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, 

 that we accept the proposition that the functions 

 of the state may be properly summed up in the 

 one great negative commandment — ' Thou shalt 

 not allow any man to interfere with the liberty 



' ' Life and Letters of Thomas H. Huxley,' by 

 Leonard Huxley, Vol. I., pp. 384-5, Appleton, 

 New York, 1900. 



of any other man ' — I am unable to see that the 

 logical consequence is any such restriction of the 

 power of government, as its supporters imply. If 

 my next-door neighbor chooses to have his drains 

 in such a state as to create a poisonous atmos- 

 phere, which I breathe at the risk of typhoid and 

 diphtheria, he restricts my just freedom to live 

 just as much as if he went about with a pistol 

 threatening my life; if he is to be allowed to let 

 his children go unvaccinated, he might as well be 

 allowed to leave strychnine lozenges about in the 

 way of mine; and if he brings them up untaught 

 and imtrained to earn their living, he is doing his 

 best to restrict my freedom, by increasing the bur- 

 den of taxation for the support of gaols and work- 

 houses, which I have to pay. 



The higher the state of civilization, the more 

 completely 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. 



In the examples given by Huxley, the 

 acts complained of are injurious not only 

 to society, but to the individual. But even 

 when the act of an individual is actually 

 for his own benefit, it may not be for 

 the benefit of society. The paradox that 

 the intelligent actions of a million indi- 

 viduals, each attempting to better his con- 

 dition, may result in making the aggregate 

 condition of the million worse, is illustrated 

 by considering the effect of individual ac- 

 tion in the case of a burning building. 

 When a theater is on fire, thousands of 

 frantic individuals are struggling to get 

 out. In the panic, it is doubtless to the 

 best interest of any particular individual 

 to struggle to get ahead of the others ; if he 

 does not, he is far more apt to be burned. 

 And yet nothing is more certain than that 

 the very intensity of such efforts in the 

 aggregate defeat their own ends. The rea- 

 son is that the effect of the effort is chiefly 

 relative; so far as one pushes himself for- 

 ward he pushes others backward. 



Numerous examples exist of actions 

 which benefit the individual but injure so- 



