ke or the fire is
full. There does not seem to be much reason for their action, but, of
course, it is a social custom. You may have been disposed to despise
the humble lizard with his open countenance and foolish smile, but you
see there is something quite human and heroic about him, too, in his
respect for a social custom.

Moths have a social custom, too, which impels them to fly into the
flame of the candle, and bees will drown themselves in boiling syrup.
No matter how many of their friends and cousins they see lying dead in
the syrup, they will march boldly in, for they each feel that they are
strong enough to get out when they want to. Bees all believe that they
"can drink or leave it alone."

But moralists tell us that prohibition of any evil is not the right
method to pursue; far better to leave the evil and train mankind to
shun it. If the evil be removed entirely mankind will be forced to
abstain and therefore will not grow in strength. In other words, the
life of virtue will be made too easy. We would gently remind the
moralists who reason in this way that there will still be a few hundred
ways left, whereby a man may make shipwreck of his life. They must not
worry about that--there will still be plenty of opportunities to go
wrong!

The object of all laws should be to make the path of virtue as easy as
possible, to build fences in front of all precipices, to cover the
wells and put the poison out of reach. The theory of teaching children
to leave the poison alone sounds well, but most of us feel we haven't
any children to experiment on, and so we will lock the medicine-chest
and carry the key.

A great deal is said about personal liberty in connection with this
matter of the prohibition of the liquor traffic, though the old cry
that every man has a perfect right to do as he likes is not so popular
as it once was, for we have before us a perfect example of a man who is
exercising personal liberty to the full; we have one man who is a
living exponent of the right to do exactly as he likes, no matter who
is hurt by it. The perfect example of a man who believes in personal
liberty for himself is a man by the name of William Hohenzollern.

If there were only one man on the earth, he might have personal liberty
to do just as he liked, but the advent of the second man would end it.
Life is full of prohibitions to which we must submit for the good of
others. Our streets are full of prohibitory signs,