270 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES 



more genuinely practical importance than that of breaking 

 down this civic indifference, which lies at the jropt^ of thg 

 incompetence of our public representatives. It is far more^ 

 important than any particular reform in our laws or institu- 

 tions. For if the social conscience were more generally 

 active, and civic duties were more unconditionally impera- 

 tive, reforms, wise in their conception and far-reaching in 

 their beneficent effects, would follow almost of themselves. 

 The community whose morals are genuinely socialized is 

 like a strong man in mind and body, fit to meet any ordinary 

 emergency. It has little to fear in facing the fixture, for 

 the nature of things is at its back. 



How, then, is this more active social spirit to be made 

 more general? How are more good men to be brought 

 to regard the_affairs of the city and the State as if they 

 were their own? Not by an appeal to sentiment, or by 

 stirring the emotions at least in the first place. The 

 value of sentiments depends upon the convictions from 

 which they spring. They are worthy only if their object is 

 worthy. And if at any time our best feelings do not 

 cluster round worthy objects, it means that we have not 

 recognized the true nature of these objects. All genuine 

 reformation comes from clearer vision of what is right. 

 And this is what I implied when I said that our indifference 

 to the social good rests on ignorance^ and on the fallacies 

 of which ignorance is both the cause and the victim. I 

 shall mention only two of those fallacies at present, for our 

 time together is very limited. 



The first I shall call, at the risk of some misunderstand- 

 ing, thejallacy of the Individualist ; the second the fallacy 

 of the Socialist. Both of these terms have many meanings, 

 all these meanings continually change, and only the fool- 



