line of demarcation between them, as well defined as the most tortuous isothermal crossing the American continent. There is no scientific boundary of government. As between the two disputants it is a blind push and pull, in which neither party is satisfied with the result. There are gradations upon either side, and long ago Herbert Spencer became alarmed at the coming slavery, and that good man Gerritt Smith thought government should have nothing to do with the education of children; that it is altogether a private function and can not be usurped by the state without serious injury to those most nearly interested.
While, however, doctrinaires have been groping for the scientific boundary, government has gone forward experimentally, with no chart but experience, sometimes right and sometimes wrong, no doubt, in its endeavors to follow the line of least resistance and do that which seemed likely to promote the general welfare.
Granting the evident natural law that development is the result of activity of faculty, and, as a consequence, that individual improvement must come from individual exertion, it may be safe to say that the scope of government should be such as to give or permit the greatest normal and harmonious activity to the units of population, in order to bring about the greatest amount of aggregate excellence and happiness; and still it appears to be a matter of experience and experiment, in which science and altruism play but a subordinate part. Nevertheless, there should be investigation of governmental experiments, and the great and ever recurring question is, What do these show?
Has government help promoted individual competence, and has it promoted the general welfare? In answering this question it will not do to look at it as a whole; each experiment must be taken by itself, and there must be
