Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/149

 hygienic, educational, and other measures which are in advance of the desires of most recipients of these benefits, this governmental policy must remain in fair accord with individual felt interests. If it goes strongly against private personal feelings, it will lose much of its efficacy, and will be difficult to enforce, as is seen in the case of vaccination and the abuse of alcohol.

But a more important limitation of governmental standards for ordinary economic life lies in the fact that the higher economic activities and the wealth they yield are right expressions of a personal welfare. This brings me to a final repetition of a theme which has been running throughout this economic exposition. The main economic activities of man at all times are devoted to the maintenance of those physical qualities of life in which men are similar or even identical. It is this fact that warrants the stress I lay upon the balance between routine production, ripe for Socialism, and individual production needed to satisfy those wants, needs, and desires, in which the differences of higher personality are expressed. Every man must be assumed to have a right individual estimate of his higher goods, while in his lower goods he conforms to the accepted standards of his tribe, class, or nation. When, therefore, we accredit the State experts with the right to impose certain hygienic and other practices upon producers, consumers, and citizens, we signify that the animal man, with his customary standards based on survival values, does not make adequate