THE INDIVIDUAL AS SUCH 131 



themselves to my memory as on the whole 

 a rather weedy-looking collection, while the 

 men or women who have looked like perfect 

 animals have not infrequently been wholly 

 incapable of filling the station into which they 

 had chanced to be born. 



Still another picture is that of men as each 

 striving simply for his own individual in 

 terests, and of nations as similarly striving 

 against one another. We find this picture 

 pressed upon us, not merely by the old- 

 fashioned political economists, but also from 

 many other quarters. It is evident that men 

 and nations do compete with and struggle 

 against one another, and must be ready to do 

 so whenever necessary. But we have only to 

 go out of our arm-chairs into the real world 

 to find that they are equally willing to co 

 operate with and help one another, even to 

 the point of taking great risks or making 

 great sacrifices. This is so not only with 

 individual men, but also with nations. A 

 wave of national feeling may quite easily 

 carry a country into war in defence of another 

 country, just as one man will readily risk his 

 life to save another man, or simply to carry 





