THE ERROR OF INDIVIDUALISM 243 



And such, we repeat, must be the view of the individual who, 

 thxown back on his own resources, is ever seeking the satisfaction 

 of his desires, and is unable to find it. He is a product of social 

 life ; his wants are social in their nature, and far exceed his indi- 

 viduality ; and yet he has only this insufficient individuality to 

 rely on, and to support him. Individualism takes no heed of 

 the fact that the individual is not an entity in abstracto. The 

 individual is an integral part of a Whole which has formed him ; 

 withdraw the individual from society, and the individual — as 

 we know him in the human species — is unthinkable. We are 

 told that the individual, distressed and disheartened by the 

 bankruptcy of Liberalism and of so many other ideals of the 

 nineteenth century, will find comfort by shutting himself in his 

 ivory tower, by taking refuge in the extremes of individualism, 

 by making of the world a synthesis of which the Ego is the centre. 

 But the individual is not sufficient unto himself ; and his wants 

 and aspirations can find their satisfaction only in society which 

 has created them. And if society be incapable, through its in- 

 coherence, of regulating his activities and his desires, he will 

 necessarily be driven to pessimism and to nihilism. The growth 

 of pessimistic doctrines within a society, and the increase in the 

 social rate of suicide, are both unmistakable results of the same 

 cause — ^namely, social disintegration. That pessimistic doctrines, 

 such as humanitarianism, pacifism, socialism, are on the increase 

 in OUT Western civilisation to-day is a fact beyond dispute. 

 That their accompaniment — the increase in the rate of suicide — 

 is likewise a fact will be seen by the figures we have given at the 

 beginning of the chapter. 



To conclude, we may say that it is erroneous to suppose that 

 the diminution of the suicide-rate, and consequently the ameliora- 

 tion of those conditions which engender suicide, will be attained 



16—2 



