Spirit and body (that is, public feeling and the law) in the social organism are as inextricably conjoint as the spirit and body of a man—public feeling needing its proper clothing of laws, as our souls need due clothing by our bodies. And if men cannot be made kind by law, they can and are by law reminded that they must not, under temptation, do what, in cool and disinterested blood, they disapprove of their neighbours doing. But there is another and perhaps more convincing answer to these critics. “You say it’s no good passing laws. If men are prevented from ill-treating one object, they’ll only ill-treat another.” So be it! Is that any reason for not trying to save the victims of such cruelty as we can actually see. Are we in fact to disregard the sufferer because his torturer may break out in a fresh direction. That would be as much as to say that a man watching another making his beasts go faster to market by jabbing them with a pitch-fork must pass by on the other side and do nothing to help the creatures, because if the prodder be prevented he may to-morrow cut off the tail of his horse to improve the poor brute’s value. No! Where you see cruelty, stop it! On that principle the individual and the State know where they are; the opposite is but that: “What’s the good of anyfink—why! noffink!” philosophy which, purged from all need for effort, in a world of facts, is so truly ethereal and pleasant to hold! Some of these critics, no doubt, would carry the matter further. “We don’t think of the object,” they would say, “because the weak must go to the wall, cruelty being inherent in the struggle for existence.” Well! The sort of cruelties we have any chance of legislating against are certainly not necessary to the preservation of our existence; they are luxuries, excrescences, or that kind of short-cut which often takes one round the longer way. The struggle for sheer existence we cannot, of course, annul; it goes on, and always will. But in this age the human being is surely bound to say: “I am not only thankful that I am alive, but that all these other creatures are alive; I am not only thankful that I am without pain, but that none of these others are in pain either. I wish the world to be a decent place for them as well as for myself!” And if these critics, returning to their mutton, say: “Quite so, sir, we desire that as much as you, perhaps more; we only tell you that you can’t make men feel like that by law!” the answer once more is: “Freely admitted! But if you do not concrete and record in laws such humane feelings as you secretly and truly have, if you do not keep the body of the social organism in time and tune with its soul, you are handicapping the growth of your humane feeling for want of signboards against temptation to profit at the expense of others; and you are passing by on the other side instead of going to the help of those you see being ill-treated.” III