But the dangers and inconveniences which arise from the unsettled condition of the world of labour will doubtless from timeto time here,as elsewhere,prompt to premature attempts at regulation.Apart,however,from the removal of evils whichthreaten the health of the workers or the public peace,and from temporary palliatives to ease off social pressure,the rightpolicy of the State in this sphere will for the present be one of abstention.It is indeed certain that industrial society will notpermanently remain without a systematic organization.The mere conflict of private interests will never produce awell-ordered commonwealth of labour.Freiheit ist keine Lessung .Freedom is for society,as for the individual,thenecessary condition precedent of the solution of practical problems,both as allowing natural forces to develop themselvesand as exhibiting their spontaneous tendencies;but it is not in itself the solution.Whilst,however,an organization of theindustrial world may with certainty be expected to arise in process of time,it would be a great error to attempt to improviseone.We are now in a period of transition.Our ruling powers have still an equivocal character;they are not in real harmonywith industrial life,and are in all respects imperfectly imbued with the modern spirit.Besides the conditions of the new orderare not yet sufficiently understood.The institutions of the future must be founded on sentiments and habits,and these mustbe the slow growth of thought and experience.The solution,indeed,must be at all times largely a moral one;it is thespiritual rather than the temporal power that is the natural agency for redressing or mitigating most of the evils associatedwith industrial life.(2)In fact,if there is a tendencyand we may admit that such a tendency is real or imminentto push theState towards an extension of the normal limits of its action for the maintenance of social equity,this is doubtless in somemeasure due to the fact that the growing dissidence on religious questions in the most advanced communities has weakenedthe authority of the Churches,and deprived their influence of social universality.What is now most urgent is not legislativeinterference on any large scale with the industrial relations,but the formation,in both the higher and lower regions of theindustrial world,of profound convictions as to social duties,and some more effective mode than at present exists ofdiffusing,maintaining,and applying those convictions.This is a subject into which we cannot enter here.But it may at leastbe said that the only parties in contemporary public life which seem rightly to conceive or adequately to appreciate thenecessities of the situation are those that aim,on the one hand,at the restoration of the old spiritual power,or,on the other,at the formation of a new one.And this leads to the conclusion that there is one sort of Governmental interference which theadvocates of laisser faire have not always discountenanced,and which yet,more than any other,tends to prevent thegradual and peaceful rise of a new industrial and social system,namely,the interference with spiritual liberty by setting upofficial types of philosophical doctrine,and imposing restrictions on the expression and discussion of opinions.
It will be seen that our principal conclusion respecting economic action harmonises with that relating to the theoretic studyof economic phenomena.For,as we held that the latter could not be successfully pursued except as a duly subordinatedbranch of the wider science of Sociology,so in practical human affairs we believe that no partial synthesis is possible,butthat an economic reorganization of society implies a universal renovation,intellectual and moral no less than material.Theindustrial reformation for which western Europe groans and travails,and the advent of which is indicated by so manysymptoms (though it will come only as the fruit of faithful and sustained effort),will be no isolated fact,but will form part ofan applied art of life,modifying our whole environment,affecting our whole culture,and regulating our whole conductin aword,directing all our resources to the one great end of the conservation and development of Humanity.
NOTES:
1.This aspect of the subject has been ably treated in papers contributed to the Proceedings of the Royal Society ofEdinburgh on several occasion,during and since 1881by Mr.P.Geddes,well known as a biologist.
2.The neglect of this consideration,and the consequent undue exaltation of State action,which,though quite legitimate,isaltogether insufficient,appears to be the principal danger to which the contemporary German school of economists isexposed.When Schmoller says,"The State is the grandest existing ethical institution for the education of the human race,"he transfers to it the functions of the Church.The educational action of the State must be,in the main,only indirect.
