io 4 THE COMING OF SOCIALISM 



and incompetent are being eliminated with more and more 

 automatic certainty and less and less mercy. And is 

 private greed disappearing under the new regime ? What 

 does the moralist fear more, or with better reasons to-day, 

 than that the new industrial conditions will absorb the 

 mind of the nation to a degree that imperils the deeper 

 foundations of its welfare? 



The contention that "Socialism is already upon us" 

 is true, if by that is meant that the method of organised 

 communal enterprise is more in use ; but it is not true if 

 it means that the individual's sphere of action, or his 

 power to extract utilities, that is, wealth, out of his 

 material environment has been limited. It is being over- 

 looked that the displacement of the individual is but the 

 first step in his re-instalment ; and that what is represented 

 as the "Coming of Socialism" may, with equal truth, be 

 called the " Coming of Individualism." The functions 

 of the State and City on the one side and those of the 

 individual on the other^ have grown together. Both 

 private and communal enterprise have enormously in- 

 creased during the last century, and, account for it as we 

 may, they are both still increasing. Hence it is possible 

 that here, once more, the principle is illustrated according 

 to which the realisation of the self, whether on the part 

 of the individual or of the State, is at the same time the 

 realisation of the self's opposite. It is possible that the 

 State as a single organism grows in power, even as its 

 citizens acquire freedom ; and that the more free and 

 enterprising the citizens, the more sure the order and 

 the more extensive the operations of the State. The 

 antagonism of the State and the citizen is one of_those 

 things, taken for_grantggL without; being examined, which 



