V] LATER PROGRESS 143 



parts working for its own continuance " -another 

 individual. 



When we come to man, this power possessed by 

 one unit of entering into more than one individual 

 "at once' : (see note, p. 13) becomes very marked. 

 A man can very well be at one time a member of 

 a family, a race, a club, a nation, a literary society, 

 a church, and an empire. "Yes, but surely these 

 are not individuals," -I seem to hear my readers' 

 universal murmur. That is a question which neither 

 the size nor the scope of this book permits. Here 

 we can but express a pious opinion : that they are 

 individuals, that here once more the tendency towards 

 the formation of closed systems has manifested itself, 

 though again in very varying degrees, so that some 

 of the systems shoAV but a glimmer of individuality, 

 others begin to let it shine more strongly through. 

 That their individuality is no mere phantasm I think 

 we must own when we find men like Dicey and 

 Maitland (12, p. 304) admitting that the cold eye of 

 the law, for centuries resolutely turned away, is at 

 last being forced to see and to recognize the real 

 existence, as single beings that are neither aggregates 

 nor trusts, of Corporate Personalities. 



This being so, it yet remains true that the state 

 or society at large is still a very low type of individual : 

 the wastage and friction of its working are only too 

 prominently before our eyes. With the examples of 



