Page:Conventional Lies of our Civilization.djvu/175

Rh "Vigilance Committees", and the most model order prevailed without any official machinery. It is not true that all our legal squabblings and janglings are needed to have justice properly administered. In those primitive communities to which I refer, a public and private right was recognized, which ensured to the first possessor his legal title to his "claim" and to all the fruits of his labor, and this without courts, magistrates and records, due solely to the common sentiment of what is equitable and proper, which civilization has developed in mankind. These were the circumstances in those camps formed of the roughest, most passionate and undisciplined individuals of all nations. And the great majority of humanity, the gentle, the peaceable, the quiet-loving members of society, do they require these everlasting leading-strings? If nine tenths of the existing laws and regulations, courts and magistrates, decrees and records were entirely done away with, the security in regard to life and property would remain the same as at present, every human being would continue to enjoy his rights unmolested, not one of the genuine advantages of civilization would be diminished in the slightest, and yet the individual would acquire by it a liberty of action unknown before, he would appreciate and live up to his individuality with a delightful intensity of which he can now form no conception, hemmed in as he is on all sides by the present inherited conditions of existence. Perhaps this emancipation might cause him at first uneasiness and alarm, such as a bird born in captivity, might experience if the cage door were left open; it must first learn to spread its wings, conquer its dread of space, and experiment until it has confidence and courage in every fibre of its being. But on the other hand, the barbarian accustomed to untrammelled self-control and self-guidance could not conform himself without constant