Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/160

 42 PEOPERTY IN LAND.

nance and harmony of natural laws, which in preceding chapters he so well develops. Where such restrictions as Factory Acts seem needed in the interests of labor, the seeming need, to my mind, arises from previous restric- tions, in the removal of which, and not in further restric- tions, the true remedy is to be sought. What attracted me in " The Reign of Law" was the manner in which the Duke points out the existence of physical laws and adapta- tions which compel the mind that thinks upon them to the recognition of creative purpose. In this way the Duke's book was to me useful and grateful, as I doubt not it has been to many others.

My book, I thought, might, in return, be useful and grateful to the Duke might give him something of that "immense and instinctive pleasure" of which he had spoken as arising from the recognition of the grand simplicity and unspeakable harmony of universal law. And in the domain in which I had, as I believed, done something to point out the reign of law this pleasure is perhaps even more intense than in that of which he had written. For in physical laws we recognize only intelli- gence, and can but trust that infinite wisdom implies infinite goodness. But in social laws he who looks may recognize beneficence as well as intelligence ; may see that the moral perceptions of men are perceptions of realities ; and find ground for an abiding faith that this short life does not bound the destiny of the human soul. I knew the Duke of Argyll then only by his book. I had never been in Scotland, or learned the character as a landlord he bears there. I intended to pay a tribute and give a pleasure to a citizen of the republic of letters, not to irritate a landowner. I did not think a trumpery title and a patch of ground could fetter a mind that had com- muned with Nature and busied itself with causes and beginnings. My mistake was that of ignorance. Since

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