The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1901-05-16
The State and |.

Men do not deserve power. This talk
OF rights is fallacy. Things as they
are, are of divine ordination. To
question the present order would be
subversive of society. You should
never seek to crafty your desires.
This world is a place of probation.
Suffering should be sought for its own
sake; the more you suffer here, the
more you will enjoy hereafter. Leave
the things of this world to those who
crave them"
These teachers teach only of the
soul, seeming to almost forget the
needs of the body.
Between the two extremes, the minds
OF men, searching for truth, have
wandered for ages. In the effort to
solve the problem, perpetual conflict
seems to have arisen between the in
dividual and society, leading some to
condemn all kinds of government and
social progress, and others to sink the
individual in the state. Is there no
middle ground, no true solution? Are
there not some certain principles which
clearly and broadly mark out the lines
of personal freedom and show where
that freedom is necessarily limited in
its sphere?
The difficulty lies in the fact that
with almost every truth enunciated by
human authority there is some admix-
ture of error. If ones own aspirations
for freedom are in themselves wrong,
this cry for liberty which has sounded
through the ages is mockery, and the
very nature of the human mind is a
snare unto itself. Yet it is plain that
the scientist is correct in stating that
our desires must be limited by physical
laws, and most people will concede that
the religionist is telling the truth when
he says all power is from God. But
the former too frequently ignores the
action of moral laws, while there are
now and then those of the latter class
who dogmatically assert that science
and progress are opposed to religion.
The impossibility of the unlimited
scope of unlimited desires must be
conceded. There must be limits,
moral as we'll as physical. Apart from
the consideration of each mans duties
to himself, which form the proper SUBJ
ject for his own conscience, how shall
the state so arrange matters as to pre-
serve freedom of all without interfering
with the liberty of each?
Here is another difficulty. Govern
ment is not science, it is an expert.
ment; and in the nature of things, as
society advances new problems arise to
be solved, new perils to be avoided.
This flows from the variable nature of
mans wants and the variable means of
supplying them, so that no individual
course can be predicted with certainty
apart from the circumstances which
surround it. Hence the order of state
craft must be constantly changing to
suit the progress of human society.
What was wrong at one stage of the
worlds history, or would have entailed
great, hardships, becomes right at
another period and is also a means of
extending the blessings of civilization.
In this diversity of condition, is there
no principle, fixed in itself but variable
in its application? a.
Individual liberty must be conceded
as the first step, no one has the right to
abridge it. What is this liberty? By
the very fact of birth we prove our
natural right to live; otherwise nature
enacts lie, and this right to life is
equal among all the children of men.
From the right to life flows also the
natural right to work out the end of
our existence, which some men mis-,
takenly seek in animal pleasures, and
others gloriously follow in obeying the