Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 22.djvu/550

534 man without work die of hunger, for I contend that we can support him without giving him either wages equal to those of prosperous times, or wages that will allow him to become a mischief-maker or a soldier of the civil war."

The state concerns itself with the general interests of agriculture and commerce; with public works, the fine arts, posts, telegraphs, etc.; different ministries have been constituted for these ends; we believe there ought also to be a ministry of philanthropic institutions, charged with the duty of taking the initiative and creating foundations of this kind, with encouraging and aiding those that already exist, and with centralizing the efforts, gifts, and loans of individuals for philanthropic establishments. New organs should be provided, in the great body of the state, to answer to new needs. We now witness in this matter, especially in France, an absolute dispersion of forces, an anarchy, and faults in initiative and organization that impede all reform; if a special ministry existed for such questions, which seem not less important than those of the posts, commerce, and agriculture, the impulse would be quickly given. Loans, gifts, and legacies would permit the state to institute experiments under scientific methods or to aid those which might be made. Individuals do not, as a rule, care to bequeath their property to the state in general, for a general and neutral use; but how many persons would be glad to make gifts or legacies to philanthropic institutions! Religious congregations have a wonderful art of finding money for their works of benevolence; the state ought not to fold its arms and be indifferent as if it had no precise obligation in the matter. Foresight, public benevolence, and "fraternity," in our modern societies regulated by laws of increasing complexity, ought not to remain a kind of moral luxury wholly abandoned to the chances of individual inspiration. Charity is a general duty of justice, a work of science and not of mere sentiment, in which social economy and natural history ought to co-operate. In reality, the idea inspired by the labors of the Darwinian school on heredity and selection is, upon a final analysis, that of solidarity; and that is the very foundation of moral fraternity. Solidarity, doubtless, causes the miseries of one to fall upon the other members of the society, but it also extends the good fortune of each one to all and that of the mass to each one. By this very fact, it obliges society to find a remedy for every evil that afflicts the individual, because every such evil tends to become social. Solidarity limits our modern societies to the alternative of progress or dissolution. In the perfected machines which modern industry uses to weave linen, cotton, or wool, when a single thread breaks, the loom stops of itself, as if the whole had been informed of the accident that had befallen one of its parts, and could not continue its work till the breach is repaired. This is a type of the solidarity which is destined to reign more and more extensively in human society. In that social web in which all individual destinies intercross, it must come to pass