THE GENERAL DIRECTION OF PROGRESS 197 



any society is, then, dependent both upon its organ- 

 ization and upon the units of which it is composed. 



On the other hand, the individual benefits equally 

 from the organization. The man of the twentieth 

 century possesses a vastly larger share of good 

 things than the man of any previous century. Civ- 

 ilization has placed in his hands a power which he 

 could not have possessed as an independent indi^ad- 

 ual. Even the poorest classes to-day have a greater 

 amount of comforts than did the well-to-do in the 

 earlier ages. The very lowest classes, the ignorant, 

 are still pressed by want. This has always been the 

 case and perhaps always will be. But the next higher 

 stratum of society has advantages never dreamed of 

 in earlier centuries, and these advantages have come 

 from civilization. Organization has raised the plane 

 upon which the mass of the people stand. While 

 society benefits by the advance of the individual, the 

 individual benefits even more from the advance of 

 society. The individual has always suffered more 

 from disintegration than from centralization. 

 Clearlv, there is no inconsistency between the ad- 

 vance of man as man, and the advance of society, 

 even though the two forces are constantly opposed to 

 each other. 



Although the central authority has been constantly 

 increasing its power, it has done so only by changing 

 its nature and by giving more and more attention to 

 the interests of the individual man. Slowly but 

 surely has appeared the conception that the object of 

 government is the benefit of the people, and this con- 

 ception has resulted in an almost complete change in 

 the aim of government and law. Under centraliza- 

 tion in the crude form of the early centuries the gov- 



