shake their heads, and tell us that he is right--that letting us alone
will never secure us perfect happiness. Under all this lies the
familiar logical fallacy, never expressed, but really the point of the
whole, that we _shall_ get perfect happiness if we put ourselves in the
hands of the world-reformer. We never supposed that _laissez faire_
would give us perfect happiness. We have left perfect happiness
entirely out of our account. If the social doctors will mind their own
business, we shall have no troubles but what belong to Nature. Those we
will endure or combat as we can. What we desire is, that the friends of
humanity should cease to add to them. Our disposition toward the ills
which our fellow-man inflicts on us through malice or meddling is quite
different from our disposition toward the ills which are inherent in
the conditions of human life.

To mind one's own business is a purely negative and unproductive
injunction, but, taking social matters as they are just now, it is a
sociological principle of the first importance. There might be
developed a grand philosophy on the basis of minding one's own
business.




IX.

_ON THE CASE OF A CERTAIN MAN WHO IS NEVER THOUGHT OF._


The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism
is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be