Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/555

Rh retaliatory action is aroused, with waste of energy and disagreeable effects on either side. A society so restrained is held together by but weak bands, and is ill fitted to support itself against external enemies. Internal co-operation for the benefit of the community can not be active under such circumstances. The products of labor are insecure. Moreover, whatever has to be done in the way of self-protection or of the safeguarding of property is so much withdrawn from the advancement of the general interests of the body social.

We have only to consider the condition of any European country, our own included, in the good old times which so many ignorant persons regret as a sort of golden age, to see how unsatisfactory must be the state of a nation in which only a stern code of laws, or the dread of retaliation, protects each against the undue egoism of his fellows. Internal wrong-doing and the necessity for constant struggle to resist such wrong-doing made each nation unstable. Our good old England was invaded and conquered over and over again in consequence of instability so produced. From long before the invasions by Saxon hordes under pirate chieftains to long after the invasion by Normans under the bastard descendant of the pirate chief Rollo, England was made wretched and miserable by constant contests, having their origin invariably in that undue egoism which we now call rapine and plunder. None—not even the most powerful—were secure. The castles we find so picturesque and romantic, the battles which seem glorious, the chivalry in which we see so much splendor, all tell us of a state of barbarism, of abject misery for the majority, of magnificent discomfort for the powerful. In the unsafety of those days, however, resided the certainty that the undue egoism of "the good old times" would by a natural process of evolution be eliminated. It is not yet fully eliminated; probably centuries will elapse before it is even in great part got rid of; but it is manifestly much reduced. We still have laws to protect us against wrong-doing, but the worst wrong-doers—those who of yore were the principal component parts of the body politic—no longer exist in the same way as of old. A much larger proportion of the social body recognize regard for others as a duty; no inconsiderable proportion recognize it as a pleasure; and, what is of more importance still, men recognize the advantage of encouraging these changed tendencies.

These changes have come on so gradually that few consider how important they really are. It is not too much to say that a large proportion of the Englishmen of our day would find life not worth living if the old state of things were restored; if, for instance, life and property and reputation became as insecure now as in the days of the Plantagenets, the Tudors, or even the Stuarts.

And here it may be noticed that those who neglect the consideration that they form part of the social body and refrain from the taking due part in maintaining a healthy social state suffer from the