520 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



63. 



Antithesis 

 between 

 Individual 

 and the 

 State. 



of subsistence everywhere can afford. This principle 

 Spencer had already recognised in his earliest work, 

 'Social Statics' (1851). He terms it there the "dis- 

 cipline of nature," and he brings it home to his readers 

 through a quotation from Shakespeare's " Winter's 

 Tale": 



" Nature is made better by no mean, 

 But nature makes that mean : so, over that art 

 Which you say adds to nature, is an art 

 That nature makes." 



The importance of this view probably grew upon him 

 as the principle received a mechanical definition in the 

 formula which Darwin found for it. 



The question then arises, not only as to what are the 

 units among which selection takes place, but, in the 

 case of society, the further question : is this selection 

 carried on for the benefit of the individual members or 

 for that of the aggregate, the State ? If the latter, then 

 we come back to a view which prevailed among the 

 classical nations of antiquity, where man was considered 

 to be subordinate to the State ; if the former, then we 

 are led to that individualism, peculiar to Mill and 

 Spencer, which manifests itself in the objections they 

 urged against the revival of ancient and mediaeval 

 absolutism in Comte's system of positive politics. It 

 has also been pointed out, by English as well as by 

 foreign critics, that in human society there exist forces 

 of a different kind from those that are at work in 

 nature. This existence of intellectual and moral forces, 

 constituting the ideal element, which should govern, and 

 has in an increasing degree governed, the collective life 



