Thus in the latter part of the 18th century the doctrine that man has some individual rights by nature, not by grant or prescription, and not alienable, obtained official recognition in two great nations. It has since been formally and officially iterated in the Constitutions of many American States and has been proclaimed and invoked as an impregnably established political truth. Nevertheless the doctrine is only a theory, not yet demonstrated nor undoubted. It has been assailed and in the opinion of many refuted, by Bentham, Mill, and other utilitarian writers, the successors of Epicurus, Carneades and the Sophists. Even in France and America it is now repudiated by many and declared to be an obstacle to social and political improvement. Still, despite the vigorous arguments against the doctrine, there remains the innate feeling and a general belief that society abridges individual rights instead of conferring them. In support of this notion may be cited the fact that the statutes of any state or nation are almost wholly restrictive or compulsory in character, and rarely, if ever, permissive. From the Decalogue down, the language of the law has been compulsive, "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not"; and men generally act upon the theory that what society does not forbid by statute or custom the individual may do. In passing now from the region of theory, of speculative opinion, to what seems to me the region of facts, of actual conditions, of actual traits of human nature, I wish it to be understood distinctly that in what I may say about rights I am considering only the precepts of justice, and that I differentiate those precepts from the precepts of religion, charity, philanthropy, benevolence, and other similar virtues, and even those of what is loosely called humanity. If it be true as asserted by Addison that justice is the greatest and most godlike of the virtues, it does not follow that the just man, to be just, must possess all or any of the other virtues. One can be just without being religious, charitable, or philanthropic, and even without earning the reputation of being humane. I wish further to premise that I am considering our subject only with reference to those who have grown to the age of self-maintenance and consequent freedom. I do not take into account the rights of children under that age. With these premises borne in mind, I would now in the next chapter call attention to some propositions of fact, which I shall assume to be established by science and history and by the reader's own experience and observation, and which I think bear more or less directly on our subject. CHAPTER III THE PROBLEM OF RIGHTS CONTINUED. THE NEED OF LIBERTY OF ACTION FOR THE INDIVIDUAL