Self Control, or Other – Unknown, 6/28/1890

Republished from Lucifer’s sister publication Fair Play

It is commonly thought that the belief that one person has, righteously, power over another by virtue of
position, birth, strength, wisdom, or divine delegation, has passed away in this country. But it is not to
be expected that a belief which has been so long and so generally held by the human race—which has
been so great a factor in human development, both for good and for evil—should vanish in two or three
generations and leave no trace behind. It is nearer the truth to say that the belief exists in a modified form
than that it has passed away. Our modern substitute is not essentially different from the original belief.
We hold that one man has no right to power over another; but two men have. What we deny to birth,
strength, or intelligence, we concede to numbers. In any particular case the concession is practically
a necessity, because the greater number has the power. But so, in the case of two men on an island, a
similar concession may be necessary. Of course, if the weaker man on the island, or the smaller number
in a society, can be convinced that the concession is just, they will be less discontented. Yet the real
reason for yielding would be the same in both cases: namely, that any other course would be useless.
The difference between belief in the right of the majority to control the minority and of the stronger to
control the weaker is certainly not one of kind. Our belief that the authority of the State is intrinsically
just is not so very different, at bottom, from the savage’s belief that it is right for his chief to kill him and
eat him. Both beliefs are doubtless useful at different stages of social development, rather for the feelings
which they foster than on account of their truth. The sentiment of personal devotion to a chief is of the
highest importance to tribes in their conflicts with others. So, in more developed societies, devotion to
country is necessary after the first sentiment has become impossible. As long as there is any danger of
war, it is of the highest moment that there should be the feeling dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

A fear on the part of modern governments that this feeling may not be strong enough is evinced by their
adding, as an additional inducement, the promise that if one goes to war and is not killed, great shall be
his reward in the land. A very excellent society may be conceived in which the citizens are regarded as
the property of the ruler; another in which they are the property of the State; still another in which the State
is conceived as belonging to the citizens. But the excellence of one will differ from that of the others as
the excellence of the freeman differs from that of the slave. The excellence of a slave consists in his
willingness to belong to someone else and to be ruled by him; that of a freeman consists in directing his
own actions wisely. There have been enough examples of the first two kinds of societies, but for two
hundred years the ideal has been a society of freemen. This ideal has not yet been realized—probably
from lack of the right kind of men. A hundred years ago there were great hopes that it would be realized
on this continent. The natural conditions were sufficiently favorable. There was no hindrance from the
interference of other nations. The men who were to found the society were descended from the race
which had the strongest sentiment for personal liberty of all the races upon earth. They had no institutions
with roots striking back into the past which make so strongly against progress. They had the ideal before
them, and they set to work to realize it. A century has passed, and the realization is as far off now as it
was then. It may be questioned whether the ideal has not itself grown dim. The desire for a favorable
balance of trade competes strongly with the desire for freedom. Social, industrial, and political relations
in this country are, in a few respects, worse, and in most respects not much better, than they are in Europe.
It may be that the material conditions were too favorable here; that the facilities which nature offered
men for industrial development blinded them to the desirability of a healthy political development.

But the chief blame must be laid upon the nature of the men, and not upon the nature of the country. The
prospect that the United States will ever become an ideal commonwealth is not so good now as it was at
the adoption of the Constitution. Not that the experiment has been a failure. Mr. Bryce is very likely right
in saying: “That America makes the highest level not only of material well-being, but of intelligence and
happiness, which the race has yet attained, will be the judgment of those who look, not at the favored few
for whose benefit the world seems hitherto to have framed its institutions, but at the whole body of the
people.” But we have not become—as it was hoped a hundred years ago that we might—a nation of
freemen in the true sense of the words. It may be doubted whether the individual man enjoys any larger
liberty here than in England, or even than in most of the nations of Europe, aside from matters connected
with military service. A society in which the units play freely upon one another, instead of having their paths
prescribed for them by the regulative agency, might not attain any higher point of material well-being than
a society of the opposite character. But there is something in human nature which will be satisfied with
nothing less. The Socialistic ideal of society—to which its members stand in the same relation as the cells
stand to an animal organism, in which each cell receives its proper amount of nourishment and is restricted
to its special function—will never content us. Man cannot live by bread alone, however good a thing bread
may be. The popular philosophy of the day is with the Socialists, in that it bids “seek first the kingdom of the
material world, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Individuals who follow this recommendation
usually end by losing all desire for “other things.” Whether the same will hold with nations ought not to be
a difficult question.

Perhaps the experience which the world is getting at the present may be valuable to it in the future. Sixteen
hundred years of religious persecution taught the nations that governments should not undertake to teach
religion; they may learn in time that the same agency is not well adapted to inculcate morals. Governments
have left off prescribing how men shall use their power of speech; perhaps the experiments they are making
now, together with those they made in the past, will at length show them that they may safely abandon pre
-scribing the manner in which men shall conduct their business. And so with their other industrial and their
sanitary attempts. It is interesting to notice how different are the motives which actuate the men who administer
governments now from those which actuated the men who formerly administered them. It would be unjust to
attribute all instances of tyranny in the past to a wanton love of exercising power, but that must have been the
reason for a great many. At present most of the tyranny is the result of the best intentions. No man is more
willing to indulge in tyranny than the genuine philanthropist; but his interferences with liberty are no less
injurious because he means well. The effect produced during years of bad crops by the English Corn Laws
was not less evil because the intentions of the legislators who enacted them were (perhaps) good. A sufficient
reason why liberty is a good thing is that human nature is what it is. The biological reason is because a certain
amount is necessary to life. If liberty of movement is wholly taken away, death ensues. A smaller interference,
if continued, makes life more difficult. The feelings appropriate to these conditions have been produced. A
momentary arrest of breathing by an external agency produces an intolerable sensation—far greater than
that due to actual want of breath. The feeling caused by any restraint upon the movement of the limbs is
exceedingly disagreeable; and in the higher races of mankind this feeling is extended so as to include
anything which even threatens to restrict the sphere of individual activity. The love of liberty is primarily a
form of the love of life; and to assert that a man can gain a benefit by resigning a portion of his liberty is
to assert that another will take better care to preserve his life than he will himself take.