Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/411

392 divided and subdivided, interests have increased in number and have been more and more interlaced with each other, classes and professions have arisen which were formerly unknown. We can no longer divide society exhaustively into upper, lower, and middle classes. In this country, at least, such a division would have no meaning. Government has passed through successive forms and stages, which we generally regard as successive improvements, until now government is a complex machine, with numerous departments, diverse organs, complex functions, and above all an abstraction called law which determines the method of operation of all the parts. A nation is no longer a horde of individuals following the command of one man. It is a vast organism. Its members are endowed with free will to determine their own acts in accordance with their own wishes. They undertake independent enterprises of wide scope; they select their own combinations into which they enter; they form their own opinions of what is wise and right and true. They find in all this that they are inextricably entangled with each other. Society is solidified and bound together by these numerous bonds, and we find that it is of the utmost importance to us that our neighbors, as well as ourselves, be wise and prudent, for we see that their folly or wisdom reacts upon us as ours upon them. We can no longer appeal to some supreme ruler to make others do what they ought to do in the interest of all. We must get together and by common consent agree upon what we will do, what concessions we will make to the common interest, what efforts we will contribute to the general welfare. We can no longer get the social body regulated by instructing a prince or a few ministers; we must mold public opinion — this new power