lectivism, is Nature's way. If our own object
is the greatest aggregate of human comfort, we should realize that the
greatest possible aggregate can only be attained when each individual
under the stimulus of self-interest gets the largest measure of comfort
for himself.

In the dim future which we shall not see, this may lead to conclusions
which one shudders to think of. It may be that the time will come on
this planet when in a decreasing population struggling for existence
from the remains of an exhausted Nature, the greatest good of the
greatest number will be found by the deliberate extinction of those
least fit, that what is available may be reserved to those who can make
best use of it. Astronomers tell us there are probably dead worlds whose
spectrums tell us that they are of the same material as our own planet
and presumably once the abode of sentient beings, for it is unthinkable
that of all the worlds which occupy space which has no confines,
the small planet which we inhabit alone supports sentient life. What
tragedies darkened the last centuries of life in those dying worlds or
what may happen to our own remote descendants happily we cannot know,
but human experience does not enable us to conceive of any physical
structure which does not ultimately resolve itself into its primal
elements. On our own planet we know of forms of once vigorous life
which utterly perished by reason of physical changes which we cannot
comprehend, and that high civilizations one after another have risen,
flourished, faded and become extinct while yet our own world was young,
and who shall say what is in store for our own civilization?

If this is gruesome why should one be asked to present a subject which
cannot be adequately presented without showing what pygmies we are and
how helpless in the grasp of an all-powerful Nature.

And the application of it all is that when Nature's sole and universal
stimulus to progress is the love of self which she has implanted in
every soul, it is folly to assume that we can better Nature's work
by substituting for the universal stimulus to effort a more or less
fleeting emotion which takes hold of but a very few and persists with
but a still smaller number. Whatever scheme of collectivism we may
establish, we know in advance that every member of the collective
group will continuously strive to get for himself to the utmost limit
regardless, if it could be discovered, of what is rightfully due