technologically most efficient producer or distributor,
but as the strongest financial or political power.

§ 150. And finally we should note that, also in the
more personal relations, and here especially, we do as a
matter of fact, and almost as a matter of instinct,
recognize the dignity and the independent rights of
those who know. Think, for example, of your child.
If you are a sensible parent it will be true that no non-
sense about the inborn rights or the essential rationality
of children has prevented you from dictating what he
was to do. But some day or other you discover, to
your surprise perhaps, that his resentment of dictation
is no longer a mere animal impatience of restraint but a
more or less intelligent assertion of personal responsi-
bility. And then I think you will leave him with the
consciousness of having offered a just ground for offense.
In this you recognize that a new personality has appeared
in the family, no longer to be merely directed, but more
or less to be reasoned with and consulted; and that so
far as he is really responsible and knows what he is
doing he has the right to act upon his own responsibility.
Or take your servant. Surely it would seem that a
servant is there to do what he is told in the way that
you prescribe. But not so a servant who knows his
business. And not merely because you fear to lose him,
but because also, on moral grounds, you are compelled
to recognize in him, as a responsible person, a free agent
who as such is an end among the other family ends, and
has the right, while fulfilling his obligations to you, to
satisfy his own sense of what is rational and right. ⁹

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