whole,  in  the  matter  in  question,  men  may  be  expected  to
discover  and  aim  at  their  own  interests  better  than  Govern-
ment will  do  this  for  them :  that  from  their  better  oppor-
tunities of  learning  what  conduces  to  their  own  welfare,
or  from  their  keener  and  more  sustained  concern  for  the
attainment  of  this,  the  ultimate — if  not  the  immediate —
result  will  be  better  than  any  that  could  be  attained  by
placing  them  in  governmental  leading-strings ;  while,  further,
this  habit  of  self-help  will  give  not  only  knowledge,  but
also  self-reliance,  activity,  enterprise.
But,  granting  all  this  to  be  generally  true,  it  by  no  means
follows  that  an  aggregate  of  persons,  seeking  each  his  own
interest  in  the  most  intelligent  and  active  manner  possible,
is  therefore  certain  to  realise  the  greatest  attainable  happi-
ness for  the  aggregate.  Indeed,  it  is  obvious  that  if  the
mode  of  action  on  the  part  of  any  one  individual  which  is
most  conducive  to  his  own  interest  diverges  from  that
which  is  most  conducive  to  the  interest  of  all,  then  the  more
completely  he  is  left  free  to  pursue  the  former  end,  the
more  certain  it  is  that  he  will  not  promote  the  latter  in  the
highest  attainable  degree.  Hence,  to  complete  the  theoretical
argument  for  laisser  faire,  we  require,  besides  the  psycho-
logical proposition  that  every  one  can  best  take  care  of  his
own  interest,  to  establish  the  sociological  proposition  that  the
common  welfare  is  best  attained  by  each  pursuing  exclusively
his  own  welfare  and  that  of  his  family  in  a  thoroughly  alert
and  intelligent  maimer.
