Synopses & Reviews
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: arise only to be defeated in its movements toward realisation. This restraint is furnished by Law. We find not infrequently in communities of all times that self-control by which a man is a law unto himself for the good of all, but we more often encounter an absence of self- restraint in which one seeks only that he may be a law unto others and be himself independent of law. In such case as the last mentioned, there must either be war, which is the destruction of society, or there must be a power sufficient to impose a restraint in the social interest, which must somehow be defined and declared. A man by his own strength and prowess may defend himself and maintain his life, but he does it at the sacrifice of that satisfaction which the social part of his nature craves. He may, indeed, do without this for a time; but sooner or later his gregarious inclinations will assert themselves, and then returns tlie problem of how to maintain society and promote social progress. Every one likes to have his own way; no one cares to be restrained. Moreover, restraint tends to suppress spontaneous activity; if it be too absolute it not only prevents action but it quenches enthusiasm, weakens energy and hinders development. It opposes progress of the individual, and thus may be an opponent to social progress. If absence of restraint is dangerous and destructive, so also is too much restraint. Thus the general condition essential to social progress is the establishment of an equilibrium between Liberty and Law. Neither can be dispensed with, and neither can be permitted unqualified supremacy over the other. But since there is in the nature of things an apparent conflict between the two, how is any stable equilibrium possible ? Is not the antagonism irrepressible, and is not the best status ...
Synopsis
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