Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/253

Rh society is exempt from this law. Whatever the character of the forces in operation, they will govern all classes alike; they will govern them despite the precepts of moralists, pedagogic or ecclesiastic, or the regulations of despots, autocratic or democratic.

However closely history may be interrogated, it can not be made to disclose a truth more profound or important. Yet it is one not only seldom admitted but constantly violated. With amazing perversity, social reformers close their eyes to the significance of the fact that the dominance of pacific activity since the days of mediæval disorder has slowly brought about, without particular effort on their part and often in spite of them, the social and political ameliorations that now exist. Scornful of science and impatient of delay, they refuse to act upon the commonplace that human society in the future is to be bettered in no other way than it has been in the past. Hence they do not attempt to promote the growth of the free industrial institutions of peace that have lifted society to its present level. On the contrary, they strive to promote the growth of the discredited institutions of political despotism. What the result of this policy will be requires neither experiment nor experience to tell. The law of social science, whose operation I have attempted to illustrate, warrants the prediction that it will be disastrous. For, differing in degree, not in kind, the aggressions of government are as vicious and destructive as the aggressions of conflict. Be the motive ever so noble, not the smallest sum can be taken from a man for an object he does not approve without the commission of an act as repugnant to justice as the theft of a marauder, Nor can he be forced to take the shortest step from a line of conduct, not because it violates the rights of his neighbors but because it fails to accord with their notions of duty, without enslavement. Neither can the political contests made necessary by this aggression be carried on without the discipline of an army and the ethics of devastation. When, therefore, it is proposed to revive the institutions of feudalism, the products of war, to add to the wealth and happiness of men, the products of peace, only a return to the evils that have never failed to impoverish and degrade them can possibly occur.

But the extension of the free industrial institutions of peace threatens no such disaster. They involve no aggression; they permit neither theft nor enslavement. Being voluntary organizations to which a man may belong or not, just as tastes and interests incline him, he is not forced to part with his property except in one of the ways that must prevail in all societies truly civilized—namely, by gift or contract. Although membership of an organization, no matter what it be, requires a surrender of freedom to a greater or less extent, it is not compulsory, and the rights surrendered may be resumed at