Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/714

698 by yet baser motives, is the story of nineteenth-century politics.

In spite, however, of such self-betrayal, things have improved even for the self-betrayed—not, of course, as they might have done, but still they have improved. If we compare the beauty of our modern cities and the multiplied conveniencies and decencies of modern life with the condition of things existing fifty years ago, we shall see that the average citizen lives in a world that is a much pleasanter and more desirable abode than that in which his grandfather's years were passed. At very small expense he can do a hundred things and share a hundred pleasures and advantages that either were totally inaccessible to his grandfather, or were only to be obtained at almost prohibitive cost. Whether the man of to-day is on that account happier than was his ancestor is another question; all we maintain is that he has at least the means of enjoyment and self-improvement placed within his reach in much more liberal measure. It is needless to say that all such changes for the better have been due, in the first place, to the great advance that has been made during the present century in scientific knowledge, and, in the second, to a certain enlargement of view and increased liberality of sentiment that have been the accompaniments of that advance. To say that the benefits of scientific discovery and invention have been monopolized by the rich would be to fly in the face of the most obvious facts. To the rich have doubtless been opened up new channels for extravagant expenditure; but the most substantial benefits of increased knowledge have been reaped by those of average means and by the poor.

The true road to that improved condition of human society which socialists are so desirous of bringing about lies, we have always held, through a heightened and strengthened individualism. One great advantage of approaching the problem from this side is that individualism does not imply a call for any form of state action. It means an awakened sense of individual worth, a consciousness of individual rights, the exercise of individual self control, the elevation of individual aims and ambitions. The socialist wants to make men other than they now are by legislation. The individualist says that men might be other than they now are without legislation; at the same time he makes no objection to any legislation which springs from an actual necessity of the body politic, and which, without taking a needlessly wide sweep, holds out a remedy for a specific evil. He objects on principle to legislation which, for example, undertakes to repress drunkenness by forcing all men to be total abstainers. The sweep here is too wide, the law undertaking, not only to repress a specific evil, but to interfere on a vast scale with the liberties of persons who have in no way merited such interference. The cardinal doctrine of individualism is that each man is primarily responsible for making the best conditions of life he can for himself, and that he is the better for being held to this responsibility. Some writers declaim on the injustice of demanding a degree of virtue in the poor which is never practiced by the rich. It is not a case of demand, however; it is a case of counsel. If there are practices injurious to health, if there are useless modes of expenditure and degrading forms of amusement, he surely is neither an enemy nor an unsympathizing critic of the laboring classes who would urge them to avoid these things, and, by doing so, to stand forth in a nobler than any