242 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL 



bewails it, because it lowers his capacity and opportunity 

 for securing his own and his society's well-being. It is 

 mainly upon these grounds that proposals to nationalize 

 the land or the instruments of production are advocated 

 and resisted. It is tacitly assumed that individual enter- 

 prise and liberty on the one hand, and communal action 

 or "state interference," on the other, are antagonistic. 

 Human welfare is held to be best secured by maintaining 

 an equilibrium between them, and equilibrium means the 

 equality of opposing forces. Indeed, it is considered to be 

 too obvious to be even questioned that the more the state, 

 or the organized community, undertakes and performs, the 

 less there remains to be done by the individual qua indi- 

 vidual. 



Nevertheless, obvious as these conclusions may seem to 

 be, I believe they can be shown to imply a view as to the 

 nature of the relation of society to its members which is 

 not less false in theory than mischievous in practice. This 

 view rests, in fact, upon a mechanical metaphor which is 

 not applicable within the sphere of intelligent life ; and it 

 is definitely inconsistent with the conception of the growth 

 of personal intelligence and will through the ideal inclusion 

 of social tendencies, and of the growth of society by fuller 

 self -manifestation in the individual character of its mem- 

 bers. In the mechanical sphere the equilibrium that rests 

 upon resistance is the closest relation attainable, and there 

 must be exclusion and extrusion ; but, wherever we enter 

 into the region of organic existence, mutual exclusion gives 

 way to mutual inclusion. This is preeminently the case 

 in the sphere of intelligence and morality, which constitute 

 the medium in which human society maintains itself and 

 develops. There, what the part gains it gains both by 



