THE PRIDE OF INTELLECT. 255 



to be stated to be at once rejected as false. For 

 whatever may be our views as to the true end of 

 life, and differ as we may as to moral theory, we 

 are wonderfully agreed now that the one impossible 

 theory of man is that he is independent of his 

 fellow man, an atom or a point, not the centre of 

 a circle, a complete and self-sufficing being and 

 not a member of an organic social body. 



We are all agreed, then, in condemning the man 

 whose self-sufficiency and supposed independence 

 sets him up against the society to which he belongs, 

 even though he may stop short of carrying out his 

 theory into any of the grosser violations of his 

 duty to his neighbour. We know that "where 

 pride begins, love ceases," and the duty of loving 

 one another is assumed even by empirical moral- 

 ists nowadays as almost an intuitive principle. 

 Theoretically, at all events, then, we have abolished 

 that pride of self-sufficiency which lies behind 

 selfishness, and recognized the truth that we are 

 "members one of another," bound each to each 

 by the law alike of nature and of love. We have 

 not indeed abolished selfishness, but the theory 

 on which it rests, the avrapK.ua of the individual 

 atom, is no longer tenable. 



But the same attitude of the will which leads 

 man to set up his individual pleasure against the 

 common good, leads him also to assume the com- 

 pleteness of human nature as a whole, and its 



