250 SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL 



organ except that of deepening the meaning of ' ' person- 

 ality" in the individual citizen. 



But "to deepen personality" is to socialize the man; 

 and here arises the other aspect of the truth, according to 

 which the individual has been regarded as subordinate to 

 society, and morality represented as the pursuit of an 

 altruistic ideal. In one sense the altruistic ideal is a false 

 ideal ; it is false if it is meant that under any circumstances 

 the individual should seek the good of others as distin- 

 guished from his own moral good. No man can ever be 

 required to sacrifice his character. I should hold as a 

 matter of principle that every individual in Britain to-day 

 has in his own personal concerns enough to occupy him, 

 and that the man who considers that he has any call to be 

 altruistic, in the sentimental sense of the term, has a most 

 imperfect conception of duty. Duty is never superero- 

 gatory to the genuinely moralized consciousness, but an 

 obligation laid upon him which he can set aside only at 

 his own most private and personal peril. It is the novice 

 in morality and not the veteran who carries with him into 

 the service of his neighbour or of his state a supercilious 

 sense of benevolence and of condescension, and thinks that 

 he is working merely for others. The veteran has a better 

 notion of the quality of duty and goodness. He is no 

 meddler in many matters, but stands aside from affairs 

 until they come to him as absolute imperatives which he 

 dare not disobey because they involve his very manhood. 

 When this is involved he may spend his life and pour out 

 his soul like water in the public service ; but the public 

 service in that case is his own most intimate and most real 

 private good. 



But while there must remain in the moral life an intensely 



