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doubtedly the criminalizing of such conduct greatly strengthened the nations, through increased security, confidence, and economic prosperity.

In modern times the great civilizations of the world have been taking a more and more industrial and democratic character. New life, upward growth, is largely in this direction. New forms of crime are mainly industrial and social. Laws of forgery and fraud and fraudulent bankruptcy, statutes creating new forms of theft, factory and mines acts, and other legislation of social guardianship, prevention of cruelty to children and animals, education laws, prohibitions of multitudinous little annoyances and damaging acts, the criminal prosecution of drunkenness-all such are manifestations of the rising standard of our recognized duty to our brother man, and are most influential in raising that standard still higher, and in stimulating the lagging members of the community to a more healthy, more social, more truly moral life. There is no doubt also that with the rapid spread of knowledge and development of intelligence, with the diffusion of practical Christianity and brotherly helpfulness among all classes, our civilized nations have grown stronger against foes without. Compare the armaments of the great nations of Europe and America with the war power of the uncivilized, laggard, and unprogressive nations of the world, and who can doubt this? No one who understands the facts can believe even in the possibility of a great Mohammedan invasion and conquest of Europe in modern times, and a few thousand European and American soldiers can capture and hold Pekin, the capital of China, and dictate terms to three hundred millions of people. Our strength is not to be expressed merely in guns, warlike equipment, and the wealth to provide more such. The men behind the guns, intelligent, patriotic, disciplined and mutually reliant— these are the major part of our strength, and they are the

390

Limitations to Rule of Selfishness

product of an era when there is more crime than in any past age, because more kinds of conduct are recognized now to be socially bad, and punished for the general uplift to a civilization still better, stronger and more moral.

Although the progressive welfare of the individual may be considered as the great end of life, yet the preservation and prosperity of the social group must take precedence of the preservation of the individual, for membership in a community is the chief means for his upward development and wellbeing. The occasional destruction of an individual, or even of many individuals, may be necessary for the welfare of the social group. Such losses may be inflicted by foes without through warfare, or they may be inflicted by the community upon itself through punishment. In either case society not only has the right but is in duty bound to sacrifice the individual for the general welfare. The death penalty for heinous crime is as justifiable, if society deem it necessary for its well-being, as is the demand upon the citizen-warrior to meet death upon the battle-field, or upon the doctor to remain steadfast at his duty in the plague-stricken city. The good of society is the prime reason for the punishment of criminals, and their reformation is justifiable only when it conduces to this end.

As an ethical standard, the law of adult life, if unlimited, certainly teaches the duty of the individual to grow strong by securing for his own use all possible good things of life, irrespective of the welfare of others-might making right. Nature's first limitation to this rule of selfishness is found in the imperative necessity for the care of offspring: a limitation enforced among the lower animals by insensate physical forces around them. The second great limitation is found only within social groups, and is enforced through the mediation of social beings, largely through social punishment.

We have, therefore, on the one hand, the great fundamen

tal law of adult life-the law of self-support, self-interest and earned benefits-the necessity for continued individuation, the permanent good in physical strength, in independence and self-reliance, in courage even in isolation. The law of self-development is not negatived, scarcely even subordinated, but the sphere of its operations has been limited gradually by the working of nature's two great altruistic laws. Notice that these laws both conduce to the upward development and strengthening of the individual, and yet, with this higher evolution, especially in the intellectual and moral field, with the longer infancy and greater helplessness of childhood, with the increasing complexity of social life and differentiation of employments, the limitations which these altruistic laws put upon the operation of the rule of self-interest become ever greater, more extended and more imperative.

It is the old, old problem of the rights of the individual versus the welfare of society. Some liberty must be permitted, the individual must have the opportunity to grow, to develop his powers, individuation must continue. On the other hand, even in animal communities there are some restraints upon the noxious waywardness of individuals, and with higher evolution these social demands become ever more numerous, and society more sensitive to inner harms, more able and ready to punish for them. Not only does the criminal law cover an ever widening field of duties of the citizen to the state, and also to his fellowcitizens, because an injury to one becomes, and is recognized as being more and more an injury to all, but the duty of parents to children is defined and largely regulated by criminal statutes. Society is no longer contented with negative commands, it enjoins positive duties also;—not only, thou must not kill or cripple thy child or fellow-man, under penalty of punishment as a criminal; but also, thou must have thy children educated,

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A Progressive Social Equilibrium

thou must guard thy operatives in factory and mine from all unnecessary dangers. There must be a progressive equilibrium established between the rights of the individual and the needs of society, between a man's duty to himself and his duty to his fellow citizens. The rights of one must be balanced continually with the rights of all, for only in this way can persistent, yet conservative progress be assured.' The nation that does this is the nation that advances continually in civilization, strength, morality and leadership upon the earth."

But this ever nicer adjustment of mutual rights and duties means constant friction, and constant education by new social prohibitions, increasing forms of crime, and inducing multitudinous acts of petty rebellion (i. e., crimes) against society. For penal laws are not enacted and enforced unless the need for repression is recognized, and opposition will probably be more frequent in a community in proportion to its progressiveness, and to the extent of individual liberty enjoyed; that is, in proportion to the opportunity for variation and individuation in obedience to nature's great primary law of self-development. It takes time and hard pressure to convince men fond of freedom that conduct, until recently considered harmless, is bad and must be abandoned.

Nature thus compels nations to make selection of a progressive social education, and to enforce it by group pres

"Social necessities and social opinion are always more or less in advance of law. We may come indefinitely near to the closing of the gap between them, but it has a perpetual tendency to re-open. Law is stable; the societies we are speaking of are progressive. The greater or less happiness of a people depends on the degree of promptitude with which the gulf is narrowed." Maine, p. 24.

Rome, the Teutonic States that succeeded to her heritage (see pp. 62-3), England, Germany and the United States all bear witness that the enduringly successful nations are those in which wise conservatism is infused with a little leaven of progressiveness-nations where individual liberty is so highly prized that a large and fitting sphere is secured for its development, as the price of union for the commonweal.

sure. A wise social education means strength, civilization, happiness, leadership; an unwise, means weakness, decadence, and national death. For nature chooses inexorably among the nations those which on the whole make for the uplift of mankind to better things-that is, nations which in the main serve God well, for God is served wherever man is bettered. The survival of the fittest means "the success of the most civilized, or of those who potentially at least represent humanity's progress." The laws of nature are working out on large lines the good of all. Nations are the instruments, and those that do the work well prosper. Whether or not a nation is to prosper depends mainly upon its own choices-what type of man it holds up to honor and imitation, and what type it dislikes and punishes. Higher civilization implies increasing interdependence between man and man, the social body becomes more and more sensitive to little rights and wrongs, the kinds of conduct injurious to its welfare become more numerous, social prohibitions are multiplied. There are many new forms of crime, many new forms of evil, many new criminal acts recorded in the statistics.

Crime, therefore, results from the limitation of nature's law of self-interest by her altruistic laws. The anti-social individual who will not submit himself to these limitations, but insists upon acting in opposition to social necessity, he is the typical criminal. Increasing crime is a direct consequence of the enlarging spheres of operation of these two great ethical principles or laws, necessitating care for family and mutual helpfulness among fellow members of a community; in other words, it results from the growth of civilization, the development of knowledge, intelligence and social morality. The demands of a nobler fatherhood, of a grandly

1 Washburn Hopkins, " England and the Higher Morality" The Forum, Jan

uary, 1900.

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