There is a type of mind which insists that it cannot understand why it
matters to some of us what others eat, and drink, and do. It represents
us as troublesome meddlers in the private affairs of our neighbors, and
insists that none of the so-called evils of the time need trouble us in
the least if we would attend to our own business.
Our motive in seeking legislation to control the various evils that
plague society has little to do with the question of the private rights
of others. We care because we wish people well and naturally prefer to
see them doing credit to themselves, but that alone would never lead us
to organize reform associations, agitate reform questions, and seek the
enactment of sumptuary laws.
We do these things for three reasons. One is the fact that we too have to
live in the world and be affected in many ways by the good or evil of its
life. We have to help meet the cost of evildoing, endure the conditions
which it creates, and suffer the general defeat of our ideals before its
attack. The second reason is the fact that we care into what kind of a
world we send our posterity to live. We may not care what a neighbor eats
and drinks, but we do care very much what favorable or unfavorable
conditions our children will have to meet when we are no longer here to
help them. The third reason is the fact that what our neighbor eats, and
drinks, and does, affects not only him, and not only us, but all mankind.
Each individual transgression writes itself into the world life.
So far as we are concerned, regrettable as it is, the man who insists on
poisoning his body might go on getting to the last whatever satisfaction
it affords him. But we are concerned because he passes the poison on to
his children and to other people’s children. He degrades the life of
society, makes his community less desirable, and even lowers property
values in his neighborhood. In all these things we also have an interest.
By all these things we and ours are profoundly affected.
Why should we not care?