ductive power of the individual. The interplay of these two in the family has been touched upon before, and it is by no means limited to the family; this interplay extends through the whole social domain. If the social body undertakes more social burdens, it increases the second demand on the individual, and contracts his power of self-maintenance. From this there is no possible escape, and it may readily be seen how far much of our current social discussion is from touching the merits of the social questions, because it fails to run upon the lines which are laid down for all discussion by this observation of the conditions of the case. What is true, and what helps to explain the current modes of thought, is the fact that the capital at the disposal of society is so great that the diminutions of individual well-being by social burdens all fall upon an outside margin of superfluity, and so do not reach to the limits of actual necessity or crush the producer down to misery.
If the social burdens of government, public philanthropy, public defense, public entertainment and amusement, public glory, public education, did subtract from the product of the society to such an extent as to produce misery, this would react upon the numbers, and it would do it in different ways. It would make the producer less able to support children and bring them to maturity, and it would force the society to give up part of the effort by which it now maintains indigent and defective classes.
Therefore there has never been a period of civilization in which there has not been a social question, and it is safe to say that no time ever will come when there will not be a social question. In a state of barbarism the social question consists in this: whether the tribe
