decision that he does arrive at, whether of a positive or negative character, is his own decision, based upon all pertinent circumstances, and he is morally responsible therefor.

In exactly the same way a man has the power of determining whether or not he will leap from some great altitude, or perform any other dangerous act. In such cases his actual choice is of course practically controlled by the fact that bodily injury will result in the one case and not in the other. Yet there is no one would maintain that it is immoral, or at least needful of moral justification, that natural, i.e. physi cal, laws should impose this limitation upon one's desire freely to exercise his own muscular powers.

The thought immediately arises, however, that there is an essential distinction between the restraints and penalties which nature imposes and those which human authority creates. There is indeed a difference, and a very important one. This is, that the coercion of nature is beyond our control, and therefore one for which no human being or beings can be held responsible; whereas social and political restraints are artificially created, and therefore, as to any particular exercise of them, within our power either to limit or abolish. Nevertheless, looked at generally, in our world at least, absolute and universal freedom from restraints humanly imposed is as impossible as release from the limitations of physical environment.

Were we in a world in which the apparent interests, and therefore the desires, of individuals never

conflicted, it would be possible to imagine a society in which human coercion of every form should be absent. For under such circumstances no individual would even want to do anything that any other individuals would object to his doing, or would desire others to do anything that such others would not themselves desire to do. As soon, however, as conflicts of interest arise either between different individuals, or between particular individuals and the society of which they are members, or between different societies or States, the appearance of restraints humanly imposed becomes a necessity. For where interests conflict, desires conflict; and where desires conflict, all cannot be satisfied. Either each will have to yield in part, or one or more will have to give way completely to the others. Thus it follows that if one individual claim a "right" to demand that others shall refrain from certain actions which, though prompted by their own natural desires, interfere with his own freedom, those other individuals cannot be considered as free from all limitations other than those imposed by physical laws. The assumption, therefore, of an a priori freedom, or liberty in its socio-political sense, is self-contradictory. To maintain it as to the one individual is to deny it as to all other individuals; while to maintain it as to all individuals (which, if it be a moral right, would be logically necessary) is to deny it as to any particular individual.

In fine, then, in any such world as we now live in, the question is not as to whether any human coer

cion shall exist, nor even as to how much of it there shall be. For the amount of restraint that must exist is absolutely fixed by the extent to which interests conflict. We can decrease socio-political restraints only as we harmonize interests. Taking, then, any given society of men in which interests have not been absolutely harmonized, the sole questions that can rationally be asked are as to which of conflicting desires shall be satisfied, and what form the necessary restraint shall take.

When we consider the right of the State to be in this light, we see that the alternative is not between coercion and freedom, but between coercion by law and coercion by individual force.

The individual is not endowed with a natural right to freedom. Nature gives to him only powers, and in any non-political state the amount of compulsion that he would suffer at the hands of others would far exceed that exercised by any government. By the creation of a political authority, there is merely a substitution of a general, definite, paramount force for an uncertain, arbitrary, individual force. With the social life of men, antagonism between their respective interests and spheres of activity is a metaphysical necessity. Absolute freedom of every one to do as he likes is, therefore, out of the question. The only question is whether these conflicts shall be settled by the particular strength given by nature to each individual, or whether the compulsion shall be supplied by a general authority created by a union of strengths.

This is sufficient to dispose of the argument that men are born free, but are by the establishment of civil government reduced to servitude. But we may go farther than this, and declare that in an original and lawless state of nature such as is posited by some, not even the thought or idea of a right to freedom from human coercion could arise.

In another work, where I have examined the reasoning contained in the doctrines of "natural law" and of "social compact," I have written substantially as follows:

"Having now reduced so-called Natural Law to its proper ideal, relative, moral character, we have finally to show that, even in this sense, the term is not applicable to any form of regulation that can conceivably exist in a completely non-social, non-political "State of Nature" such as is necessarily postulated by Contract writers as the condition from which the establishment of political life relieved mankind. That is to say, we have to demonstrate that, when in a "State of Nature" men are said to be ruled by "Laws of Nature," these laws cannot be held to be of even a moral validity. That, therefore, when the original contract is held to rest upon, as Hobbes says, that Law of Nature, 'that men perform their covenants made,'' an assumption is made that cannot be logically justified.

"That this is so, we may see by picturing again to ourselves just what would be the condition of mankind in a completely non-political state. In such a

1 Leviathan, Chapter XV.

'State of Nature,' there is, ex hypothesi, an utter and entire absence of human association and concert of action, the only rules for the regulation of conduct that can possibly obtain being Natural Laws, as used in that sense which identifies them with the natural instincts of all living beings, men and brutes alike, to maintain their own existences, and to satisfy the desires that their own natures give rise to. Under such a régime, passion and momentary inclination necessarily have full sway, and an unmitigated and pitiless struggle for existence prevails.

"It need not be said, then, that under such conditions there cannot arise in the minds of individuals any recognition of 'rights' on the part of other individuals which should be respected by them independently of their power to maintain them. Thus defining 'right' as a man's capacity of influencing the acts of another by means other than his own strength, we may agree with Green that natural right as right in a State of Nature which is not a state of society, is a contradiction. There can be no right without a consciousness of common interest on the part of members of a society. Without this there might be certain powers on the part of individuals, but no recognition of these powers by others as powers of which they should allow the exercise, nor any claim to such recognition; and without this recognition or claim to recognition there can be no right.' 1

1 T. H. Green, "Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation," Philosophical Works, Vol. II, p. 354.