ions, which restricts their energy, because it defines
the goal to which it should be directed, but upon the exercise of the
right to pursue their own self-interest, it offers unlimited scope for
the acquisition of riches, and therefore gives free play to one of the
most powerful of human instincts. To the strong it promises unfettered
freedom for the exercise of their strength; to the weak the hope that
they too one day may be strong. Before the eyes of both it suspends a
golden prize, which not all can attain, but for which each may strive,
the enchanting vision of infinite expansion. It assures men that there
are no ends other {31} than their ends, no law other than their
desires, no limit other than that which they think advisable. Thus it
makes the individual the center of his own universe, and dissolves
moral principles into a choice of expediences. And it immensely
simplifies the problems of social life in complex communities. For it
relieves them of the necessity of discriminating between different
types of economic activity and different sources of wealth, between
enterprise and avarice, energy and unscrupulous greed, property which
is legitimate and property which is theft, the just enjoyment of the
fruits of labor and the idle parasitism of birth or fortune, because it
treats all economic activities as standing upon the same level, and
suggests that excess or defect, waste or superfluity, require no
conscious effort of the social will to avert them, but are corrected
almost automatically by the mechanical play of economic forces.

Under the impulse of such ideas men do not become religious or wise or
artistic; for religion and wisdom and art imply the acceptance of
limitations. But they become powerful and rich. They inherit the
earth and change the face of nature, if they do not possess their own
souls; and they have that appearance of freedom which consists in the
absence of obstacles between opportunities for self-advancement and
those whom birth or wealth or talent or good fortune has placed in a
position to seize them. It is not difficult either for individuals or
for societies to achieve their object, if that object be sufficiently
limited and immediate, and if they are not distracted from its {32}
pursuit by other considerations. The temper which dedicates itself to
the cultivation of opportunities, and leaves obligations to take care
of themselves, is set upon an object which is at once simpl