THE INTERACTION OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY. 22 1 



the other hand, good patent laws are the greatest 

 encouragement of material, and good copyright laws 

 of moral and intellectual progress. The social order 

 which makes the growth of knowledge possible is 

 not only a permanent source of greater wealth, but 

 also of higher culture. It generates a higher stamp 

 both of society and of individuals. And these 

 higher individuals are more dependent upon society. 

 The great author or the great poet whom we may 

 perhaps take as the type of the highest individualiz- 

 ation, pre-emiqeatly needs the social mediym of the 

 public which reads him ; and society again is bene- 

 fited by his work. 



And the social medium not only enters indirectly 

 Into the growth of knowledge, by supplying the 

 conditions of life which make it possible, but to a 

 growing extent also directly. For the growing 

 complexity of modern sciences renders co-operation 

 in work as indispensable to the achievements of 

 great results in science as in industry, and will con- 

 tinue to do so Increasingly in the future. 



Thus, on the one hand, perfect societies can be 

 composed only of perfect individuals, and on the 

 other, the perfection of individuals implies a corre- 

 sponding growth in the perfection of society. For 

 any considerable perfection of the individuals im- 

 plies more or less complete exemption from the 

 degrading influences of the material conditions of 

 life, i.e., a considerable command over nature. But 

 both the sources of this command over nature, alike 

 division of labour and knowledge of the properties 

 of things, require a highly developed social organiz- 

 ation, and this again, to be stable, must possess a 

 very considerable power over nature. Unless the 

 amount of leisure in a society is relatively consider- 



