INDIVIDUAL PERSONS MUST, of course, value things other than money if our society is to make any progress. Economic security of the individual person and that person's family provides, like democracy, an instrumental good, one which shores up the individual person's value. Those who lack a certain minimum level of economic goods will, perhaps, find it difficult to act morally, and will find little reason to value their fellow human beings.

Fyodor Dostoeyevsky, however, tells us that the definition of the human being (he said "man," but in the sense of "the human person") is the creature who can get used to anything. Thinkers as far back as Aristotle, though, recognized how debilitating to one's moral character extreme poverty can be. Only the most moral of human beings, that is, can remain untouched in their integrity by the immorality or privation of their circumstances.

It is because we wish as many persons as possible to act towards others in a moral manner that we allow them to produce as much wealth as possible. The more wealth some individuals create, the more the wealth of all tends to rise. The history of the last 300 years bears this out. The poorest members of our society have luxuries available to them which few could dream of two centuries ago.

No society, however, can long stand in prosperity without the requisite moral values which make social life possible. We should value the free market because it benefits the persons in society and allows an opportunity for all to make use of their talents to the fullest extent possible.

The market requires more than just free competition, however. It requires that people act honestly in fulfilling their obligations to others. It requires that the members of society take responsibility for their own actions. Above all, it requires that the individual person's personal integrity matter to the other members of society.

Personal integrity includes the ability to make many free decisions and to determine many of one's own choices in life. It also entails the freedom to participate in organizations which reflect the morals that one values. This should be put in practice in the vast public and private spheres which do not infringe upon others' personal integrity through government coercion.

Primary among these larger organizations which embody and succor moral values are religious organizations. Religion is too often made a second-class citizen. Certainly, in a free society, religious freedom is important. But this cannot, and should not, mean that religion's meaning and pertinence in shaping public values should be dismissed. The marketplace of ideas becomes devoid of meaning if religion, one of the forces which has most defended the integrity of the human person throughout history, is banned from public discussion and denied public relevance.

The Christian religion tells human beings "to love your neighbor as yourself." All religious institutions provide functions other than the formation of moral values such as this one, however. They are usually in the forefront of private charitable work, typing those in need to those who are able to give help.

Non-governmental charitable organizations can provide a large portion of the help needed by those who the market will inevitably leave behind. If we allow them and encourage them to do so, private organizations should be able to provide most of what many Harvard students think the government should provide, without the intrusiveness of government bureaucracy.

Private action may be found lacking at times. The free market is not a utopian ideal. But the idea that government can, through coercion, create a utopia or eliminate all human suffering is itself utopian. If we value freedom from government coercion, we should attempt to foster as many private solutions to social problems as possible.

MORAL VALUES, of course, need not be religious values. We can avoid making the individual person into a mere cog in the bureaucratic or economic machine by valuing the person for the person, as a Kantian end, not a utilitarian means. More and more often, however, this valuation is disappearing from our society.

As we become objects of government control for others' economic ends, we are becoming these cogs. Even though this occurs because we attempt to alleviate human suffering, this does little to increase the value of the human individual.

Some elderly parents are encouraged by their children to commit suicide because their suffering is too devastating, or because the economic benefits accrued by their death would allow their children to live more prosperously.

Such problems will not disappear if we allow euthanasia, which would allow medicalized killing of the elderly. Nor will they disappear if we create a national health care system which would decide according to cost who receives what care when, making exorbitant outlays for those who would die without extraordinary treatment.

With euthanasia, more people would die who really wished to go on living, or who could not make the decision to go on living for themselves. With national health care, human beings would become merely burdens on the system when they passed a certain age. (Now, at least, those with the funds to pay for life-prolonging treatment make their own decisions about whether to they pay with their own money--not the government's.)