Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/792

772 men were discovering that it was desirable, in the interest of society, that all men should be as free as possible, consistently with those interests; and that they should all be equally bound by the ethical and legal obligations which are essential to social existence. It will be observed that this conclusion is one which might be arrived at by observation and induction from the phenomena of past and present experience. My belief is that it is the conclusion which must be reached by those means, when they are rightly employed—and that, in point of fact, the doctrines of freedom and equality, so far as they were preached by the Stoics and others, would have not the least success, if they had not been so far approved by experience and so far in harmony with human instincts that the Roman jurists found they could work them up with effect into practical legislation. For the a priori arguments of the philosophers in the last century of the republic, and the first of the empire, stand examination no better than those of the philosophers in the centuries before and after the French Revolution. As is the fashion of speculators, they scorned to remain on the safe if humble ground of experience, and preferred to prophesy from the sublime cloud-land of the a priori; so that, busied with deduction from their ideal "ought to be," they overlooked the "what has been," the "what is," and the "what can be."

It is to them that we owe the idea of living "according to nature"; which begot the idea of the "state of nature"; which begot the notion that the "state of nature" was a reality, and that, once upon a time, "all men were free and equal"—which again begot the theory that society ought to be reformed in such a manner as to bring back these halcyon days of freedom and equality; which begot laissez faire and universal suffrage; which begot the theory so dear to young men of more ambition than industry, that while every other trade, business, or profession requires theoretical training and practical skill, and would go to the dogs if those who carry them on were appointed by the majority of votes of people who know nothing about it and very little about them—the management of the affairs of society will be perfectly successful if only the people who may be trusted to know nothing will vote into office the people who may be trusted to do nothing.

If this is the political ideal of the modern followers of Rousseau, I, for my part, object to strive after it, or to do anything but oppose, to the best of my ability, those who would fain drive us that way. Freedom, used foolishly, and equality, asserted in words, but every moment denied by the facts of nature, are things of which, as it seems to me, we have rather too much already. If I mistake not, one thing we need to learn is the necessity of limiting individual freedom for the general good; and another, that although decision by a majority of votes may be as good a