Forgotten Man again, and as soon as he is drawn from his obscurity we
see that he is just what each one of us ought to be.




X.

_THE CASE OF THE FORGOTTEN MAN FARTHER CONSIDERED._


There is a beautiful notion afloat in our literature and in the minds
of our people that men are born to certain "natural rights." If that
were true, there would be something on earth which was got for nothing,
and this world would not be the place it is at all. The fact is, that
there is no right whatever inherited by man which has not an equivalent
and corresponding duty by the side of it, as the price of it. The
rights, advantages, capital, knowledge, and all other goods which we
inherit from past generations have been won by the struggles and
sufferings of past generations; and the fact that the race lives,
though men die, and that the race can by heredity accumulate within
some cycle its victories over Nature, is one of the facts which make
civilization possible. The struggles of the race as a whole produce the
possessions of the race as a whole. Something for nothing is not to be
found on earth.

If there were such things as natural rights, the question would arise,
Against whom are they good? Who has the corresponding obligation to
satisfy these rights? There can be no rights against Nature, except to
get out of her whatever we can, which is only the fact of the struggle