240 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



kind ; no social principle requiring the individual to regulate 

 his activities and subordinate his desires in accordance with 

 the interests of the society of which he is a member. On the 

 contrary, individualism pushed to its farthest limits is the law 

 of economic struggle. There is no moral law, no fatherland, no 

 common interest which links together the competitors, which 

 renders them conscious of their solidarity ; there is nothing but 

 the clash of jarring interests. The law of economic struggle is : 

 every one for himself. The fatherland of the capitalist and the 

 trader is everywhere where speculation is profitable and where 

 money is to be obtained. 



Thus, in proportion as economic interests tend to dominate 

 the life of society, the more the economic power develops at the 

 expense of the political and ecclesiastical powers, the more 

 the individual is cut adrift from those supra-individual principles 

 which are the creation of social life, and which respond to the 

 needs of the socialised individual. Here we see the contradic- 

 tion inherent to the doctrine of economic individualism ; the 

 socialised individual, with all the desires, wants, and aspirations 

 which have been engendered by social life, by thousands of 

 years of constant and uninterrupted psychological interaction, 

 and which can find their limitation only in a principle similarly 

 engendered by social life — the socialised individual finds himself 

 deprived of the only means of limiting these desires which so 

 greatly exceed the Hmits of his own individuahty. These desires, 

 unlimited as regards the individual constitution, are accentuated 

 by the condition of struggle in which the individual is placed. 

 The desire of wealth, of luxury, of power, of fame, whetted by 

 the spectacle of extraordinary success in others, and still further 

 excited by the general rise of the standard of life which follows 

 on the increase of social wealth, seizes hold of the individual 

 and society, in the absence of any integrating principle capable of 

 defining the activity of its respective categories, presents all the 

 symptoms of anarchy and disaggregation. 



