There must be a more-than-natural law in the state. Our
national life and honor rest upon the stability of the democracy and
we can only maintain that by walking a very straight and narrow path.
For the peace of freedom as distinguished from precarious license is
a more-than-natural attainment, born of self-repression and social
discipline, the voluntary relinquishment of lesser rights for higher
rights, of personal privileges for the sake of the common good.
Government by the broad and easy path, following the lines of least
resistance, like the natural order, saying might is right, means
either tyranny or anarchy. _Circumspice_! One of the glories of
western civilization is its hospitals. They stand for the supernatural
doctrine of the survival of the unfit, the conviction of the community
that, to take the easy path of casting out the aged and infirm,
the sick and the suffering, would mean incalculable degeneration
of national character, and that the difficult and costly path of
protection and ministering service is both necessary and right. And
why is the reformatory replacing the prison? Because we have learned
that the obvious, natural way of dealing with the criminal certainly
destroys him and threatens to destroy us; and that the hard, difficult
path of reeducating and reforming a vicious life is the one which the
state for her own safety must follow.
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