The New Morality 



region within all beings where they touch to 

 a common and equal life — the other law, that 

 of Individual predilection, is equally indispensable. 

 Try to reduce all to the one motive of the general 

 interest, and you might have a perfect morality, 

 but a morality woodeny, hard and dull, without 

 form and feature. Try to dispense with this, 

 and to found society on individual affection and 

 love, and on individual initiative, without morals, 

 and you would have a flighty, unstable thing, 

 without consistency or backbone. 



My contention, then, is that our hope for the 

 future society lies in its embodiment of these 

 two great principles jointly : (i) the recognition 

 of the Common Life as providing the foundation- 

 element of general morality, and (2) the recogni- 

 tion of Individual Affection and Expression — 

 and to a much greater degree than hitherto — as 

 building up the higher groupings and finer forms 

 of the structure. And in proportion as (i) pro- 

 vides a solider basis of morals than we have hitherto 

 had, so will it be possible to give to (2) a width 

 of scope and freedom of action hitherto untried 

 or untrusted. Conjointly with the strengthening 

 of these principles of Solidarity and Affection 

 in society must of course come the strengthening 

 of Individuality — the right and the desire of every 

 being to preserve and develop its own proper 

 shape^ and so to add to the richness and interest 

 of life — and this involves the right of Resistance, 

 and (once more) the relegation of the formula of 

 non-resistance into the background. 



