Several things are going to happen when what a good government seeks each for a man’s business, is to let him express himself in it.

When a man has proved conclusively that he has a higher level of motives, and a higher level of abilities to make his motives work, the government is going to give him a higher level of rights, liberties, and immunities.  The government will give special liberties on a sliding scale and with shrewd provision for the future.  The government will not give special liberties to the man with higher motives than other men have, who has not higher abilities to make his motives work, nor will it give special liberties to the man who has higher abilities which could make higher motives work, but who has not the higher motives.

Men who are new kinds and new sizes of men and who have proved that they can make new kinds and new sizes of bargains, that they can make (for the same money) new kinds and new sizes of goods, and who incidentally make new kinds and new sizes of people out of the people who buy the goods, men who have achieved all these supposed visionary feats by their own initiative, will be allowed by the government to have all the initiative they want, and immunities from fretful rules as long as they resemble themselves and keep on doing what they have shown they can do.  The government will deal with each man according to the facts, the scientific facts, that he has proved about himself.

The government acts according to scientific facts in everything except men, in pure food, in cholera, and the next thing the government is going to do is to be equally efficient in dealing with scientific facts in men.

It is going to give some men inspected liberty.  If these men say they can be more efficient, as a railroad sometimes is, by being a monopoly, by being a vast, self-visioned, self-controlled body the government will have enough character, expert courage and shrewdness about human nature to provide a way for them to try it.

When the other people come up and ask why they cannot have these special immunities and why they cannot be a monopoly, or nearly a monopoly, too, the government will tell them why.

Telling them why will be governing them.

When we once reckon with new kinds and new sizes of men, everything follows.  The first man who organizes a true monopoly for public service and who does it better than any state could do it, because he thinks of it himself, glories in it and has a genius for it, will be given a peerage in England perhaps.  But he would not really care.  The thing itself would be a peerage enough and either in America or England he would rather be rewarded by being singled out by the government for special rights and distinctions in conducting his business.  The best way a democracy can honour a man who has served it is not to give him a title or to make a frivolous, idle monument of bronze for him, but to let him have his own way.