94 THE COMING OF SOCIALISM 



did emanate originally from social relations, and the State 

 has given them as well as helped to maintain them, still 

 the gift is a veritable gift, made once for all. If the State 

 in national straits has to resume them, its resumption is 

 only a borrowing from the individual, to be repaid with 

 interest when once the crisis is over. 



The collision of views between the Individualist and 

 Socialist is thus direct. The opponents stand on the same 

 ground : for both assume that individual and social rights 

 in the same objects are incompatible, and that the rights 

 in each case are fundamental. Hence any compromise 

 necessitated by the exigencies of social life is deplored as 

 a wrong ; and it is effected only after a severe struggle 

 between the parties. The equilibrium thus secured is 

 essentially unstable, and it is disturbed whenever a new 

 exigency arises. 



This is one of the main causes both of the present 

 social unrest and of the helpless empiricism of our social 

 methods. Nor is there any hope of better ways except 

 in examining the ground from which the antagonism 

 springs. And this can be done with the better prospect 

 of success inasmuch as the assumption made by both sides 

 has been examined by neither, nor has either side realised 

 the significance of its own negation. The controversy 

 persists, in fact, just because both the defence and the 

 attack have lacked uncompromising thoroughness. 



The Individualist can prove that the utter denial of all 

 rights of private property will destroy the State, on whose 

 behalf it is made, by destroying the individuality of its 

 members. Let the individual own nothing but himself, 

 and he will not have a self to own. Having no foothold 

 whatsoever in the outer world, he would live only on 



