2 4 o SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL 



of man. Nature, whether in the human or in the infra- 

 human sphere, is apt to be wider than man's thoughts, and 

 to be moved with purposes which he very imperfectly 

 divines, and never knows except in part. We are only 

 slowly learning what a majestic thing the world is, and the 

 mind of man which can explore its wonders. But this 

 consciousness of the majesty of the world and of the mind 

 of man a consciousness which ever grows within us as 

 we witness natural science gradually withdrawing the veil 

 from the face of reality is an inheritance of his age to 

 which the modern moralist may also lay claim. He may 

 regard the moral powers dwelling in man as on their way 

 to the institution of an order of social life whose laws are 

 as universal and necessary as those of the natural cosmos. 

 Their necessity would have a different history, it is true, 

 and be the very expression of freedom ; but they would 

 not, on that account, be the less necessary, the less 

 sovereign, the less constant and harmonious. And it is 

 evident that such an ideal order would fulfil the desire of 

 the Socialist. But it would also satisfy the Individualist. 

 For it would stint no member of that society of any human 

 quality, deprive him of no power or propensity or oppor- 

 tunity to do right ; but leave to him a responsibility which 

 he can divide with no one, and therefore moral possibilities 

 to whose scope there is no final limit. I should lay it down 

 as a necessary consequence of the postulate on which mor- 

 ality rests that social evolution means individual evolution, 

 and vice versa ; and, therefore, that to endeavour to secure 

 the one by limiting the other is to be false to both. And 

 I should charge both Socialists and Individualists with a 

 certain disloyalty to their own principles if, while acknow- 

 ledging the postulate of the coincidence of public order 



