Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III textit{THE PROBLEM OF RIGHTS CONTINUED. textit{THE NEED OF LIBERTY OF ACTION textit{FOR THE INDIVIDUAL MEN are endowed by nature with sundry powers, faculties, capacities, physical and mental. These, however, are not at all uniform, but are diverse in kind and degree in different races of men and in different individuals of the same race. Nature seems to work through diversity rather than through uniformity, indeed through inequality rather than through equah'ty. Not all men are born poets, nor are all poets equally good poets. Not all men are by nature adapted for intellectual pursuits, and thpse who are so adapted are not in that respect equally favored by nature. Even in the field of the simplest manual labor there is great diversity of natural capacity. It seems to be nature's theory that mankind, the human race as a whole, will be better served by diversities, by differences in kinds and degrees of powers, than by uniformity and equality. Further, normal men are also by nature endowed, if not with rights, yet with sundry instincts, desires, passions; also with sundry feelings, emotions, sentiments; and also with some degree of reason and power of choice. Some of these may not be apparent in infancy, but they appear in a greater or less degree of intensity as the individual develops. Among these instincts or desires is the desire to live, the desire to serve each his own welfare and that of his offspring, and the desire to decide for himself what will best serve that welfare. As a corollary, he also has by birth the desire for freedom to exercise any and all of his talents and powers in such manner, to such extent, and in pursuit of such objects as he prefers, or to be idle if he prefers idleness. Further, he has the instinct of acquisitiveness, t...