was conscious only of a selfish desire to further his own ends.

Such was the industrial philosophy of Adam Smith. It was in harmony with
and the natural outcome of the movement which had already revolutionized
religious and philosophic thought. In every department of human activity
emphasis was being put on the individual. Liberty was the watchword of
society--the panacea for all social ills. The Western world was breaking
through the old system of restraints under which the individual had been
fettered in religion, politics and business. A new conception of the
state, its duties and its functions, had been evolved. Mere human law
was being discredited. Philosophers, distrusting the coercive
arrangements of society, were looking into the nature of man and the
character of the environment for the principles of social organization
and order. Belief in the curative power of legislation was being
supplanted by a growing faith in the sufficiency of natural law.

The underlying motives for advocating the _laissez faire_ policy were,
however, mainly political and economic.[208] The ready acceptance of
this doctrine must be attributed largely to the fact that it offered a
plausible ground for opposing the burdensome restraints of the old
system of class rule.

This is the origin of our modern doctrine of _laissez faire_ which has
so profoundly influenced our political and economic life. But as
movements of this character are likely to do, it carried society too far
in the opposite direction. This is recognized by that most eminent
expounder of the let-alone theory of government, Mr. Herbert Spencer,
who, in the third volume of his Principles of Sociology, admits that
"there has been a change from excess of restriction to deficiency of
restriction."[209] This means that in our accepted political and
economic philosophy we have overvalued the organizing power of
unregulated natural law, and have consequently undervalued the state as
an agency for controlling and organizing industrial forces.

All new ideas have to be harmonized with much that is old. As at first
accepted they are only partially true. A new philosophy requires time
before its benefits can be fully realized. It must pass through a
process of adaptation by which it is gradually modified, broadened and
brought into orderly relations with life in general.

The theory of industrial freedom has during the nineteenth century been
passing through just such a stage of