tion, sanitation, factories and numerous other things, is in order that the free relations between man and man and between man and God may be preserved and insured from force or fraud.

The instituting of free relations between men has always resulted ultimately in an increase of State activity, and so far from there being a contradiction between the ideas of liberty and law, it is the case that an increase of liberty involves an increase of law. The Rights of Women and Children and Lunatics, for instance, as discerned in modern times and now recognised and enforced by the State, have certainly not diminished the area of the State's activity. The freeing of Slaves again has invested at least one State with an excess of occupation and responsibility. Even animals are now recognised as possessed of Rights of a conditional kind-and our statute books bear marked evidence thereof.

In brief, the activity of the State is necessary to the establishment and preservation of free human relations; that is to say, the civic relation is that which under existing conditions renders all the others possible, or at any rate secure; so that the more numerous and highly developed these become, the greater will be the field of action of the State.

The State then is not the sole force concerned in the development of character; it only contributes to it along certain lines. Owing to the nature and methods of law, it aims, as its duty towards the individual, at establishing and securing his freedom, freedom being of the very essence of the idea of "Personality," and Personality being the highest thing of which we can

conceive, and the fostering thereof the highest thing at which we can aim.

Now if the Person is not the highest thing of which our thought is capable, it follows there must be something which is higher. This higher thing is generally imagined to be that union of Persons which we call a State. But such a position is untenable, seeing that a State has no "ego" or personality of its own, and is only spoken of as an individual for purposes of brevity or convenience. The State is a collection of Persons related for more or less specific ends, and who are viewed as being so related. The State is therefore an abstraction.

If then the State cannot be regarded as "higher" than the individual, perhaps the Society or Nation for whose benefit the State exists, is "higher," and that the Socialist dogma that the "Person is the product of the State" would not only have a meaning, but would be perfectly true—provided we read "Society" or "Nation" for "State."

Now that the individual owes the development or realisation of his Personality to the sum-total of social forces and influences, is of course in large measure true. It is further true to say that in the history of law we find that the family was originally regarded as the unit, whereas now the individual is the unit, while law itself has fostered this sense of individuality. But while all this is indisputable, it is quite obvious that this legal transition could not have been accomplished had there been no pre-existing Personality on which the law could operate, and which in its own turn could make use of and further develop the law for its own further realisation. So that all that we

are able to claim for social environment in general, and law in particular, is that they are due to and have reacted favourably upon an already existing Personality.

To argue otherwise is to forget the real nature and meaning of the Political Society, and to regard it as something superhuman, and gifted with miraculous creative powers.

PERSONS CANNOT BE MERGED IN THE "WHOLE" OR CONTROLLED IN THE ALLEGED INTERESTS OF ITS "HIGHEST GOOD"

The Person thus being related to an ultra-social Environment, viz., the Absolute Person, and being moreover essentially self-determined, and being lastly not a product of the "State," but a divine creation, and the highest thing we can think of, cannot be subordinated to the supposed interests of the political Society, that is—to speculations relative to the "Good of the Whole" or the good of the Majority-but must always be regarded as an end in himself, and only to be controlled in the interests of his own Freedom. We may only legitimately speak of a Person as a part of the Whole, when we mean that he is one among other similar free beings to whom he is related. But it must not be forgotten that he is not himself that "whole," and so far as he is not that whole, and in so far as his freedom is conditioned, not by the equal freedom of others, but by considerations of the alleged "highest good" of the whole, so far he ceases to be regarded as an end in himself.

It may be claimed that the Good of the "Whole" is necessarily the Good of the Individual. But it will be admitted that the speculative conclusions of a political Majority on this subject, are by no means necessarily good for the individual, nor for the whole, not even always for the Majority itself. It is easy to find the immediate "good" of a dominant political section, but to find on purely empirical grounds what is equally good for all, and to obtain the political power to prescribe it when found, is obviously a different matter— a thing almost impossible in itself, and rendered entirely so by the interests, ignorances, prejudices and passions of the people who decide the issue. But apart altogether from this view of the matter, it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that, so far as people undertake to determine for the individual what is his "highest good," so far they stultify his free-will, conscience and judgment, and to that extent cease to regard him as self-determined, and so far merge the individual in the Whole. They must secure to him his Liberty, and leave it to himself to determine his own "Highest Good."

The evils of any philosophy involving interference with the Person for the purpose of securing what at any moment is regarded as his "Highest Good" have been exemplified with great frequency in political and ecclesiastical history, but more obviously, perhaps, in the latter case. But as the matter now stands, and in our present state of advanced Personal Liberty, the objection to the Church controlling the individual against his will is most generally based on a priori grounds of the individual's natural or inherent right to religious liberty, and does not pretend to be the outcome of

speculations concerning Public Utility; while even the most socialistic of the populace in this matter make common cause with their opponents, and urge their claim to religious liberty on this same ground.

This fact is full of significance. Largely owing to the reformed religion in this Country, the personal detriment arising from the subordinatiou of the individual to the supposed "good of the Whole " is here perfectly apparent to the popular mind, that mind being no longer prejudiced and terrorised by a powerful priestly organisation, which has in view nothing but the Good of the Whole, i.e. the assumed Good of the organisation to which the priests belong. There can be no question but that all persecution whether "religious" or other, is based upon and seeks its moral justification in the attractive and plausible dogma that the individual can with moral propriety be subordinated to the "good of the Whole." It is further certain that where that dogma prevails we shall in some form or another get persecution.

The difficulty of determining the mutual relations of the Political Society or Nation, and the individual, is greatly enhanced by the gratuitous introduction of metaphors drawn from the laboratory and the dissecting-room. Up to a certain point the organised Nation is loosely analogous to an organism, and persons of Socialistic tendency and of inaccurate mental method, attempt in consequence to define the relations between the State and the individual, by pointing to the relation that subsists between an organism and its members. The physical scientist has entered the domain of Human Life and claimed it as wholly his own, as indeed he has entered everywhere, demon