l87l THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 385 



other man," — I am unable to see that the logical consequence is 

 any such restriction of the power of Government, as its sup- 

 porters imply. If my next-door neighbour chooses to have his 

 drains in such a state as to create a poisonous atmosphere, 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 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 of civilisation, 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. 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 com- 

 parison of the body politic to the body physical, a compar- 

 ison vitiated by the fact that " among the higher physio- 

 logical organisms there is none which is developed by the 

 conjunction of a number of primitively independent exist- 

 ences into a complete whole." 



The process of social organisation appears to be comparable, 

 not so much to the process of organic development, as to the 

 synthesis of the chemist, by which independent elements are 

 gradually built up into complex aggregations — in which each 

 element retains an independent 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 Locke 

 fathers the pet doctrine of modern Liberalism, that the tol- 

 eration of error is a good thing in itself, and to be reck- 

 oned among the cardinal virtues." * 



* This bears on his speech against Ultramontanism. See p. 374. 



