defective arrangements which they permit to remain uncorrected. We see this in very marked degree in America, though it can be recognized clearly—far too clearly—in our own country. There the best men keep out of politics for a reason which rightly understood should make all the best men take most anxious interest in politics. Because in America offices are too often filled by mere adventurers, because bribery and corruption are rife, and because fraudulent conduct is common among politicians, therefore should it be held the duty of every right-minded American to do his best to enforce the wholesome changes so obviously required—as they might be enforced if so many of the best Americans were duly altruistic. But as a matter of fact the very circumstance which should arouse all the best in America to vigorous action is made the chief reason for withdrawing from public duties.
In our own country the same undue egoism shows itself in another and a scarcely less mischievous form. The individual members of the community find relief in the thought that social duties may be handed over to government. It seems easier to talk laws into existence for getting things done than to do them. The laws are easily passed, but the doing of what is necessary passes in a great number of cases into the hands of men not nearly so much interested in the doing of it as those who passed the laws appointing them to the work—nay, often by the very nature of the laws so passed, interested rather in delaying than in pushing on the work.
As Mr. Spencer well puts it, the man who thus shirks the duties which he owes to the community of which he forms part, who plumes himself on his wisdom in minding his own business, "is blind to the fact that his own business is made possible only by maintenance of a healthy social state, and that he loses all round by defective governmental arrangements. When there are many like minded with himself—when, as a consequence, offices come to be filled by political adventurers, and opinion is swayed by demagogues—when bribery vitiates the administration of the law and makes fraudulent state transactions habitual; heavy penalties fall on the community at large, and among others on those who have thus done everything for self and nothing for society. Their investments are insecure; recovery of their debts is difficult; and even their lives are less safe than they would otherwise have been. So that on such altruistic actions as are implied, firstly in being just, secondly in seeing justice done between others, and thirdly in upholding and improving the agencies by which justice is administered, depend, in large measure, the egoistic satisfactions of each."
Apart from dangers directly affecting life and property, those resulting from undue egoism in business relations show the necessity of just altruism for the welfare and happiness of the social body. Not only is it well for each to recognize the rights of others, but each is
