Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/175

Rh democracy. All institutions are to be tested by the degree to which they guarantee liberty. It is not to be admitted for a moment that liberty is a means to social ends, and that it may be impaired for major considerations. Any one who so argues has lost the bearing and relation of all the facts and factors in a free state. A human being has a life to live, a career to run. He is a center of powers to work and of capacities to suffer. What his powers may be, whether they can carry him far or not; what his chances may be, whether wide or restricted; what his fortune may be, whether to suffer much or little are questions of his personal destiny which he must work out and endure as he can; but for all that concerns the bearing of the society and its institutions upon that man, and upon the sum of happiness to which he can attain during his life on earth, the product of all history and all philosophy up to this time is summed up in the doctrine that he should be left free to do the most for himself that he can, and should be guaranteed the exclusive enjoyment of all that he does. If the society that is to say, in plain terms, if his fellow-men, either individually, by groups, or in a mass—impinge upon him otherwise than to surround him with neutral conditions of security, they must do so under the strictest responsibility to justify themselves. . . . It is not at all the function of the state to make men happy. They must make themselves happy in their own way and at their own risk. The functions of the state lie entirely in the conditions or chances under which the pursuit of happiness is carried on, so far as those conditions or chances can be affected by civil organization. Hence, liberty for labor and security for earnings are the ends for which civil institutions exist, not means which, may be employed for ulterior ends. . . . Democracy, in order to be true to itself, and to develop into a sound working system, must oppose the same cold resistance to any claims for favor on the ground of poverty as on the ground of birth and rank. It can no more admit to public discussion, as within the range of possible action, any schemes for coddling and helping wage-receivers than it could entertain schemes for restricting political power to wage-payers. It must put down schemes for making 'the rich' pay for whatever 'the poor' want, just as it tramples on the old theories that only the rich are fit to regulate society. One needs but to watch our periodical literature to see the danger that democracy will be construed as a system of favoring a new privileged class of the many and the poor. . . . In a free state every man is held and expected to take care of himself and his family, to make no trouble for his neighbor, and to contribute his full share to public interests and common necessities. If he fails in this, he throws burdens on others. He does not thereby acquire rights against the others. On the contrary, he only accumulates obligations toward them; and, if he is allowed to make his deficiencies a ground of new claims, he passes over into the position of a privileged or petted person—emancipated