the idea of individualism. He thought that church and state in combination hampered the progress not only of the whole human race, but of every individual member thereof. His ideas were drawn from Rousseau and others of like mind, who were afterwards responsible for the French Revolution. He bent his energies, therefore, first, to a separation of church and state, and then to the organization of a state whose powers were merely delegated; reserving everything which was not necessary for peace, quietude, and good order, to the individual citizen. It was good statecraft to remove the power of ecclesiastical authority from the human race. If the authority of the church had been removed and the religious instinct had remained in all its vigor, then the individualism of Jefferson would have been almost perfect.

These same ideas led to the political philosophy of Adam Smith. And the mad rush for individual success and preferment induced the breeding and rearing of children in England, not to become part and parcel of the Empire, but to become parts of the machinery of the manufacturing industries of that country; and individualism became tyranny. Its practical workings could have produced nothing else than Karl Marx and his philosophy of socialism. An individualism which teaches the right to success without emphasizing the duty of not depriving any other man of his opportunity, is as much an evil as the system which exalts our common rights by depriving us of our personal rights. Both individualism and socialism contain germs of good. It is, however, only by striking a balance between opportunity and duty that justice may be obtained in a republic.

I am myself an individualist. I hope there are ways whereby this system. may survive without the destruction

of the doctrine of liberty, fraternity, and equality before the law. If it is to survive, however, there must be a more thorough knowledge on the part of the people of the cause of present conditions, and they must be courageous enough to cure the cause and cease treating the symptoms.

What is true of the average man is true of society at large. Forbidden fruit is the fruit we want. With a garden filled with other kinds of fruit, Adam wanted apples. The abolition of the compulsory worship of God, the submission of that question to the dictates of one's own conscience, and the teaching that it was the right and the duty of a man to get on in the world, rapidly led to the conclusion that if by legislative enactment we might separate church and state and make men free and equal, then all moral responsibility would be shifted from the shoulders of men to the shoulders of legislators, and he who kept himself within the strict letter of the statutory law would be a good and faithful citizen: honest, moral, and upright. Men began to devote their entire time, energy, and thought to success. When criticized for his conduct, man said, "The courts have decided in my favor and I am not wrong.' The pages in the family Bible most frequently consulted were those in the centre of the book, where births, marriages, and deaths are recorded. They were valuable in determining how an estate should be divided.

To-day, statutory crime is followed by punishment, usually sure and swift. Few who with bludgeon or pistol strike down their fellow men, escape; those who steal are safely incarcerated within prison walls, and punishment is meted out because of statutory enactments. Among the memorabilia of the law is the incident of a business man in Boston who went one Sunday to consult Chief Justice Parsons and was

told by that great justice that he did not practice law upon the Sabbath. The man urged that it was a matter of great moment, whereupon he was asked if he knew what in the premises was right. Acknowledging that he did, he was told to go and do the right thing with the assurance that the Chief Justice would furnish the law to uphold his acts. Is it not a startling comment ary upon the individualism of this country that business men will go to a lawyer to find out whether a dollar is theirs or the other fellow's, and to ascertain to what lengths they may go in a business transaction without violating the statutory law of the land? Has not the getting-on in the world of Thomas Jefferson been turned into the getting-all in the world?

In the exercise of our individual rights we perhaps have forgotten the existence of our individual responsibilities. There can be no right without this corresponding responsibility. The worship of God according to the dictates of a man's own conscience implies that he should have a conscience, and demands that it should dictate. Men are not sent as perfect men into a perfect world. The facts of life, whatever its theory, demonstrate that it is a place for men to struggle in, and, if possible, to succeed in. They must struggle physically, mentally, morally. They must be equipped physically, mentally, morally, for the struggle. It will not do, in a republic at least, to shift responsibility to the shoulders of constituted authority. It is necessary for men to know the facts, to grapple willingly with them, and righteously to overcome them.

Men thought when they had bred two-minute horses that the limit of speed had been reached; that the posIsibilities had been exhausted. Then came the automobile. A new Mother Shipton could prophesy on any street

corner to a credulous audience, unchallenged. The medical profession, after it had driven malaria from Indiana, thought that its occupation was gone, but appendicitis has developed. New diseases constantly call for new cures at the hands of science. New pests on field and farm and tree urge the husbandman and the fruit-grower to seek new remedies. The process of the evolution of evil keeps pace with the evolution of good everywhere.

The manufacturer of food-products, kindly and well-disposed, generous and charitable, who would not dream of taking the life of his fellow-man, will use benzoate of soda as a foodpreservative. It is immaterial whether it is dangerous to life or not. He is feeding dirty food to the people, and he is taking a chance with human life. His individualism is making a success of his business. What is it doing with his conscience? A manufacturer, who would weep over the unfortunate condition of a defective child, takes into his factory hundreds of immature children, and never dreams that under the evolution of evil there can be any moral responsibility resting upon his shoulders, inasmuch as the law of the land does not forbid.

What shall be said of the railroad director who has knowledge of a defective road-bed and of decayed rolling-stock, but prefers to declare a dividend and risk an accident? What shall be said of the landlord who permits his tenants to take their chances with bad plumbing and leaking gas-pipes? What shall be said of the individual who waters stocks and bonds and sells them to the unwary because the law does not forbid? What has come upon a world prating of its love of brotherhood, when men have no higher idea of responsibility than conformity to the strict letter of legislative enactments? Do we believe that

we are going to control all things by mere statutes?

Even a cursory examination in any state of this Union of an attempt thus to control life will disclose the fact that too little good has been accomplished thereby. The placing in the code of laws which the people do not enforce, does little more than bring the code into disrepute. Executive authority everywhere recognizes that a law law which rises above the moral sentiment of its community is not enforceable. Judges frankly admit that we cannot make men honest, truthful, just, by statute. We can drive a man out of a dishonest business, but his dishonesty will appear in some other business unless a change takes place in the man himself.

Few people now remember that it is the moral law which says: "Thou shalt not kill,' 'Thou shalt not steal,' "Thou shalt not covet.' They think that general assemblies have said these things; but even in a mad rush to reform the world, legislatures have not gone that far. The utmost that any one of them ever does is to affix punishments for those who thus violate the law. Legislative enactments read: 'Whosoever shall kill,' and, 'whosoever shall steal,' shall be punished. If not understood, it is at least taken for granted, that the striking down of men in cold blood will not be wholly prevented by any punishment which the law may affix. Indeed, the fathers did not anticipate such a result, and they did not affix the punishment for that purpose. They declared in many of the charters that punishment should be reformatory in its character. They were not obsessed with the wisdom and power of lawmaking bodies. If the violations of the strict letter of these ancient laws are lessening, this desired result comes not so much from the fear of punishment

as from the lively conscience of the individual citizen. I mean to speak reverently when I say that Jehovah Himself failed in dealing with mankind when He said, "Thou shalt not.' The glory and the splendor of life today are not traced to his, "Thou shalt not,' but rather to the "Thou shalt' of his sinless Son.

There are three grades of citizens. There are those who obey the law through fear of its penalties, — men who deal squarely because their lawyers tell them that they will lose money, and perhaps their liberty, if they do not. These constitute the lowest grade of citizenship. There are those who obey the law because it is the law; they have no respect for it; they regard it as crude, foolish, immaterial legislation; but their respect for constituted authority induces them to keep the letter of the law regardless of their opinion of the spirit of it. These constitute an improved class of citizens. But the citizens of the third and highest grade are the men who make for righteousness. They are the salt of the Republic. These I am pleased to call automatic citizens. They are men who realize that with the right of individual success in America has come the duty of individual responsibility; that they may 'go the limit' in the way of success, but that they must not injure their fellow men. Not one of them would have demanded his pound of flesh, for he would have known that he could not get it without the shedding of Christian blood.

If, more and more, the men of America put their life's work and success simply to the touch of statutory law, and, more and more, entertain the delusion that individualism authorizes them to do anything which the legislature has not forbidden, and which the courts cannot punish, then the individualism of Thomas Jefferson will be

pronounced a failure, and those who have suffered from the failure of his followers to remember their duty to their fellow men will either peaceably or forcibly deprive future generations of rights now thought to be inalienable.

On the other hand, if we restore to our individualism our religious conscience, if we do not lose sight of our responsibility while at the same time insisting upon our rights, if we cease to think of laws and ordinances and customs and view ourselves from the standpoint of the other man, and if we go only as far as we can go without depriving our brother of any of his rights, then we shall begin to modify, lessen, and destroy the evils of to-day; and from age to age, as new good arises, so new evils will appear, and it will remain the duty of men of thought and conscience, of writers and orators alike, to cry aloud and spare not, urging all men to live righteously, deal justly, and die honorably. This individualistic Republic will survive, not by the might and power of its legislative enactments, but by the equitable spirit implanted in the heart of every citizen.

In olden days, it became necessary for a Prophet in Israel to rebuke very sharply that great King of Israel who was said to be a man after God's own heart. The Prophet recounted a certain grievous condition of affairs, and when the injustice of it had appealed to the King, he brought him back to a knowledge of the right by the single sentence: "Thou art the man.' This article is not intended to be by way of carping criticism, nor to charge that willfully, purposely, and with premeditated malice, we are doing wrong things in our American life. It is intended to induce introspection as well as retrospection. It would not thus be written did I believe that our people are not at heart sound and normal.

Our conduct is the thoughtlessness of

the child, not the deliberate wrong of maturity. Our American conscience is at ease in this our Zion, but it is a somnambulistic conscience. We are doing nothing which the law of the land does not warrant. If it be charged that we wrong men in the market, the all-sufficient answer is: 'Behold our benefactions to missions.' We dread death, not because it means separation from friends, not because it marks the termination of our loving ministry to mankind, but because it deprives us of title to this tenement and control of that corporation. Our right to success has blinded us to our duty toward the success of another. We assume that stone walls make a prison, and iron bars a jail. We believe that if we ever go wrong, the commonwealth will tell

us so.

Are we not mistaken? Will it ever try to do so? The difficulty with representative government is, not that it does not represent, but that it does represent. While we are content, government will not make black, white; bitter, sweet; wrong, right. But when we become discontented with conditions, we shall change them without governmental interference.

As the source of national success is the individual, so is the individual the source of national morals. We can see what we please with our eyes, but it is our duty to see beauty. We can hear what we will with our ears, but we should listen to the harmony of life and be enabled to discern its jarring and discordant notes. Ours are the hands with which the labor of the world must be done. They must work for the happiness of all, or equality before the law is a glittering generality. Our birthright in America is the right to success, but it is not success unless thereby men attain unto collective opportunity. We have the right to get into the 'bread-line,' but we have no

warrant to push out of it a weaker brother. Unless the individualism of America rests upon fraternity and faith, it will crumble to the dust, and our boasted Republic will be but another of that long line of fraternal efforts whose ruins strew the pathway of the past.

The need of the hour is not for new laws, but for new men. We must be born again—not once, but every day; born to answer aright Cain's far-off cry, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Thus and thus only can individual success look with honest eyes upon each day's

opportunity. Our brother has certain inalienable rights which kings and emperors may not seize, of which legislatures and courts and written constitutions may not deprive him; nay, more, strange as it may appear, which he, in justice to his posterity, cannot cede away. Truth, honor, justice, and mercy demand that we shall respect those rights. There is a greater man within us than the mere citizen, submerged though that man may now be in our materialistic consciences. He must arise and dominate our lives if our American individualism is to survive.

I

'You here, Bagster?' I exclaimed, as in the Sistine Chapel I saw an anxious face gazing down into a mirror in which were reflected the dimmed glories of the ceiling. There was an anxiety as of one who was seeking the Truth of Art at the bottom of the well.

Perhaps some reader of the Atlantic, with an unusually retentive memory, may remember that some time ago the Reverend Augustus Bagster1 had a leave of absence from his pulpit in order to recover from the effects of his multifarious labors. The good causes which had appealed to his alert conscience had been too much for him, when they

1 For a diverting account of the Reverend Mr. Bagster, see 'In the Hands of a Receiver,' by S. M. Crothers, in the Atlantic for August, 1911.

had each demanded his attention at the same time. I had supposed that he had followed my advice and gone up to a quiet nook in New Hampshire to recuperate. I was, therefore, surprised to find him among the crowd of Roman sight-seers.

My salutation did not at first cause him to look up. He only made a mysterious sign with his hand. It was evidently a gesture which he had recently learned, and was practiced as a sort of exorcism.

'I am not going to sell you cameos or post cards,' I explained.

When he recognized a familiar face Bagster forgot all about the Last Judgment, and we were soon out-ofdoors and he was telling me about himself.

'I meant to go to Chocorua as you suggested, but the congregation ad