THE LIMITS OF STATE-DUTIES. 641 



against other individuals but, in many respects, against the State : 

 the State, while defending him against the aggressions of others, 

 has in various directions ceased to aggress upon him itself. And 

 it is an obvious corollary that in a state of permanent peace this 

 change of relation would be complete. 



How does this conclusion bear on the question at issue ? The 

 implication is that whereas the individual had to be molded by 

 the society to suit its purposes, the society has now to be molded 

 by the individual to suit his purposes. Instead of a solidified 

 body-politic, wielding masses of its units in combined action, the 

 society, losing its coercive organization, and holding together its 

 units with no other bonds than are needed for peaceful co-opera- 

 tion, becomes simply a medium for their activities. Once more 

 let me emphasize the truth that since a society in its corporate 

 capacity is not sentient, and since the sentiency dwells exclusively 

 in its units, the sole reason for subordinating the sentient lives of 

 its units to the unsentient life of the society, is that while mili- 

 tancy continues the sentient lives of its units are thus best pre- 

 served ; and this reason lapses partially as militancy declines, and 

 wholly as industrialism becomes complete. The claim of the 

 society to discipline its citizens disappears. There remains no 

 power which may properly prescribe the form which individual 

 life shall assume. 



"But surely the society in its corporate capacity, guided by 

 the combined intelligences of its best members, may with advan- 

 tage frame a conception of an individual nature best fitted for 

 harmonious industrial life, and of the discipline calculated to pro- 

 duce such a nature ? " In this plea there is tacitly assumed the 

 right of the community through its agents to impose its scheme 

 an assumed right quite inconsistent with the conclusions drawn 

 in foregoing chapters. But not here dwelling on this, let us ask 

 what fitness the community has for deciding on the character to 

 be desired, and for devising means likely to create it. 



Whether the chosen ideal of a citizen, and the chosen process 

 for producing him, be good or bad, the choice inevitably has three 

 implications, any one of which condemns it. 



The system must work toward uniformity. If the measures 

 taken have any effect at all, the effect must in part be that of 

 causing some likeness among the individuals : to deny this is to 

 deny that the process of molding is operative. But in so far as 

 uniformity results advance is retarded. Every one who has 

 studied the order of nature knows that without variety there can 

 be no progress knows that, in the absence of variety, life would 

 never have evolved at all. The inevitable implication is that fur- 

 ther progress must be hindered if the genesis of variety is checked. 



Another concomitant must be the production of a passive re- 



