MAN DEPENDS ON SOCIETY 277 



society is not exaggerated by him, nor is the reverential 

 service that he owes to his city and his State. Indeed, I 

 doubt if these can be exaggerated ; we possess so little 

 that we have not borrowed from them. 



have my individuality," you reply, "and its 



indefeasible rights which the city and State must in all 



circumstances respect." And the reply is right. The 

 State that does not respect these, nay, the State that does 

 not deepen the meaning of personality and enlarge the 

 range of its rights is not safe or progressive. But what 



is that individuality? And whence has it come? How 



much is there of it that is not due to the State and its 



manifold institutions ? Apart from the power of jreaction 

 on its environment which is implicit in all rational life, I 

 should answer "Nothing." And even that power itself 

 wquld_rernain undeveloped, unrealized, a meaningless and 

 impotent possibility, were it not for the social system into 



which it is born, and from which at every moment of its 



existence it derives its maintenance. If we examine the 

 personality on which the individualist justly sets so high 

 a value, and the rights of which he is so conscious, we 

 shall find that every shred and element of their content 



jre derived from the State, in which he has been nurtured. 

 He grows with his world, . . . and when he can separate 

 himself from that world, and know himself apart from it, 

 then by that time his self, ... is penetrated, infected, 

 characterized by the existence of others. Its content 

 implies in every fibre relations of community. . . . He 

 grows up in an atmosphere of example and general custom, 

 his life widens out from one little world to other and higher 

 worlds, and he apprehends through successive stations the 

 whole in which he lives, and in which he has lived. Is 



