3 oo THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of citizenship which, make it worth more than it costs. If, how- 

 ever, the privileges of citizenship are lost and the burden of mili- 

 tary duty increases, men will, as in the dark ages, sacrifice per- 

 sonal liberty as well as civil liberty in order to get rid of military 

 duty. If, as in Russia, at least formerly, the privileges of citizen- 

 ship are nil and the burdens of military duty very heavy, to be 

 taken as a soldier is like incurring a capital sentence. 



If a man enjoys a position of advantage compared with others, 

 he is anxious to entail it on his children. If he is under shame or 

 disadvantage, he is anxious to break the entail. One who is born 

 of a duke is anxious to maintain hereditariness, but one who is 

 born of the hangman rebels against it. The two were part of one 

 system, and, in the long run, must stand or fall together. 



He who is not able to attain to his standards of happiness by 

 his own efforts is one of the " weak." He does not want to be let 

 alone. He wants some one to come and help him. He who is 

 confident of his own power to accomplish his own purposes, wants 

 to be let alone ; he is " strong " and resents interference. In the 

 long run, however, he who may be called upon for aid in the for- 

 mer case will insist on his right to interfere in the latter case, and 

 he who claims freedom in the latter case will find that he must 

 bear his own burdens in the former. Any other course would 

 simply lead to a new system of privilege and servitude, for he who 

 can choose his own ends and make somebody else help him attain 

 them has realized privilege in its old and ever-abiding sense. 



Privilege and servitude, therefore, are the poles between which 

 all forms of social status lie when we classify them with reference 

 to our present study. Rights lie on the side toward privilege. 

 Duties lie on the side toward servitude. Rights and duties, how- 

 ever, are not separated by any gulf nor even by a line. They 

 overlap each other. Not only are they parallel and connected by 

 the social reaction, but also often to different men or at different 

 times the same thing presents itself either as a right or a duty, 

 e. g., military duty. Somewhere between, however, lies the middle 

 point or neutral point, where there is neither privilege nor servi- 

 tude, but where the rights and duties are in equilibrium, and that 

 status is civil liberty in the only sense in which it is thinkable or 

 realizable in laws, institutions, and history. 



We have seen cases above in which the same men were under 

 privilege and servitude at the same time, having accepted one as 

 the price of the other. We have also seen cases in which the 

 privilege of some involved the servitude of others. The former 

 class of cases have been those which have had the most unhappy 

 issue, for the privileges have often faded with time and the servi- 

 tudes have been intensified. It is a bargain which a rational being 

 can rarely afford to make, to incur servitude in the hope of privilege. 



