232 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL 



felt a new impulse which arises from the fuller conviction 

 of his continuity with his natural antecedents : psychology, 

 logic, ethics and politics already show that a new spirit is 

 abroad. 



On the practical side, the pressure upward is still greater, 

 for the conditions of practical life in civilized society have 

 changed during the last sixty years in the most fundamental 

 manner. Modern invention has led to the organization 

 of industry, to the stratification of society into classes with 

 common and yet competing professional and commercial 

 interests, and to the establishment of an economic world 

 on a most sensitive and unstable equilibrium, phenomena 

 to which the past offers hardly any parallel. All the 

 familiar landmarks of social economy have been swept 

 away. We are constrained to ask with new seriousness, 

 What is this social machine which I have helped to create, 

 which reveals to me at the same moment both my weak- 

 ness and my strength, and which is at once my master and 

 my servant ? And what kind of being is he who expresses 

 his nature in this way ? " The conviction is taking pos- 

 session of the common mind that men, in pursuing their 

 own ends, have to take account of one another. If at 

 times they may be tempted to regard the peaceful gospel 

 of the brotherhood of man as a noble but rather empty 

 and impracticable sentiment, the ceaseless struggle in the 

 industrial world teaches them very effectively that in order 

 to live they must associate. The individual in his isolation 

 and singularity has had his weakness laid bare. It has 

 become altogether undeniable that the life of every man 

 in civilized society is inextricably entangled with that of 

 his fellows. In a word, the world has turned its back upon 

 Individualism in its commercial and industrial practice, and 



