284 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES 



mately into one another to permit us to represent their 

 functions as altogether distinct. Each needs the other in 

 order to act at all. Their dependence is mutual and 

 absolute, and they prosper together ; for, in truth, they 

 have but one life. Private and communal enterprise, and 

 private and communal efficiency grow together. 



From the ordinary point of view the point of view 

 occupied by the Individualist who opposes himself to 

 society, and of the Socialist who opposes society to him- 

 self this parallel growth of functions appears to be 

 impossible or a mere theoretical paradox. But on examin- 

 ing the individual in the last lecture, we found that in_ 

 opposing^ society he is really opposing himself. For he_ 

 is his society individualized, its impersonal forces focussed.^ 

 There is in him no content whatsoever, whether intellectual 

 or moral, which he has not borrowed from it. His per- 

 sonality, were it analyzed, would show nothing rational 

 that is not social. JHis speech, opinions, habits, beliefs, 

 moral purpos_es, religious faith deprived of which he 

 would not remain a rational being have been appropriated 

 by him from the common social stock. 



Not only does society enter into his personality, as does 

 the physical environment into the physical organism, but 

 society provides him with his station in life, with those 

 relations to his fellows which, in the case of 'good men, 

 become duties, that is, opportunities for realizing his intel- 

 lectual and moral self. Cut off from society he has neither 

 a_rational life nor a sphere in which to exercise its powers ; 

 hejs_like_a branch severed from the tree, all the functions 

 of his manhood are arrested. This much we said to the 

 individualist who too frequently carries in his heart, if 

 we may believe what is always on his lips, a deeper sense 



