THE FISCAL QUESTION 145 



the community as rivals and their good as mutually excluj 

 sive, is radically false. Individual and social activity are 

 coincident, and their prosperity is but two sides of the 

 same fact ; so that to limit the one for the sake of the other 

 is absurd. Instead of seeking a fixed line of demarcation, 

 or setting up artificial barriers, the enlightened citizen will 

 entrust to each those enterprises which are most suited to 

 its powers, feeling his way in doing so and learning from 

 experience. He knows that the vital issue is that the work 

 be well done, and that the question by whom it is done is 



relatively an indifferent matter. For work well done benefits 

 all alike, there being no social good which is not an indi- 

 vidual good, and no individual good which is not a social good. 

 Turning now to the relation between independent States, 

 we must first concede that it is not in all ways identical 

 with that of individual citizens to their own nation. It 

 is easy to show that the individuality of a State is intrinsi- 

 cally much more rich, concrete, and strong than that of 

 any private person ; and, at the same time, that the larger 

 society of mankind is a far more empty and impotent 

 universal than any single State is in relation to its members. 

 Hence it follows that the mutual obligations of individuals 

 within a State are much more numerous and significant 

 than those which States can recognise in relation to one 

 another, or have been able to express in international laws 

 and customs. And obligatians^are^^of^course, oppor- 

 tunities ; duties are means of self-realisation. So that the 

 different States, as matters are at present, can do far less 

 for each other than individual citizens within the same 

 State ; or in other words, cosmopolitan or humanitarian 

 ideals are far less articulated into systems of definite duties 

 than those of patriotism. 



