288 SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES 



a representative who may himself have hardly more to do 

 with the making, or the refusal to make, laws than a 

 Chinese doll whose head can be put in motion, now hori- 

 zontally and now vertically. Even in a great city the part 

 of the individual in guiding the education of the children 

 or regulating the affairs of the public is exceedingly small. 

 What matters it whether he performs his part or not? 

 The city and the State do not depend on him, is the all 

 too facile conclusion to which he is prone to come. 



And, finally, the organization of interests in modern 

 society further manifests the weakness and reduces the 

 significance of the individual. The old individual rela- 

 tions between men in different grades of society and in 

 different occupations are giving way to class relations. 

 Knowing that he is too feeble to hold his own amongst 

 forces whose influence travels far and wide through the 

 modern economic world, worker joins with worker, master 

 with master, merchant with merchant. The interests of 

 individuals jsimilarly placed in society are now massed 

 together, and the shocks of their collision travel through 

 the whole community like a blind earthquake. What is 

 the individual amongst such forces? Is it not vain for 

 him to profess a larger loyalty than that which he owes 

 to his class, or to pretend to care for the State as a whole 

 which somehow combines, if it does not harmonize, these 

 warring elements? 



Look where we will we find the individual in the 

 presence of powers he cannot control, any more than the 

 little boat can sway the waves of the swinging ocean. And 

 the natural tendency of man's sense oJLhjs insignificance 

 is to paralyse his will and arrest his service. This is one 

 reason, at any rate, why men who have the good sense to 



