THE COMING OF SOCIALISM 113 



carefully scrutinised, and tried by every test. The dis- 

 location of private enterprises is not to be lightly entered 

 upon : probably never, if the good results which accrue 

 terminate in a class ancldo not raise the State as a whole, 



or if private combination can serve the purpose with ecjual_ 



efficiency. The entrance of' a municipality or State into 

 the competitive field is not in all respects on a par with 

 the entrance of a private competitor. And, above all, the 

 range of the activities of the State or municipality varies 

 with its intellectual capacity and moral strength. There 

 is hardly too narrow a limit to the functions of a weak 



State or a corrupt city, or too wide a limit for the intelli- 



gent and strong. 



The essential point, however, is this that the limits 

 are not to be fixed by any conception of the abstract 

 antagonism of society and the individual : for each of 

 these is true to itself precisely in the degree to which it 



is faithful to its opposite. The criterion of the action of the 



State js the effective freedom of its citizens. There remains 

 in the moral life of the citizens an intensely individual 

 element which the State must never over-ride. The 

 rights of personality can be wisely sacrificed to nothing, 

 nor its good postponed to either city or State or humanity. 

 But, on the other hand, the sovereignty of the individual's 

 will and all its sacredness come from its identification with 

 a wider will. His rights are rooted in the rights of 

 others ; and all the rights alike draw their life-sap from 

 the moral law, the universal good, the objective Tightness, 

 of which no jot or tittle can pass away. Hence, the 

 individual can resist the will of the community or the 

 extension of the functions of his city or State only when 

 he has identified his own will with a will that is more 



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