248 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



child he finds his education provided for by the State ; when he 

 enters the factory he finds a compUcated system of laws destined 

 to regulate his daily activity, to protect him against undue 

 exploitation, to help him in times of distress, to assure him of 

 an endurable old age. The majority of individuals, during their 

 entire life, are thus constantly reminded of the fact that they 

 are citizens of a State whose interests are also their interests. 



But in spite of the ever greater intervention of the State in 

 the affairs of the individual, the effectiveness of this intervention 

 still remains greatly inadequate to the needs of society. The 

 more the State endeavours to envelop the individual hfe, the 

 less capable does it appear of reahsing its object of a stronger 

 integration of social Hfe. The reason need not be sought for in 

 the vastness of the State. If the State be incapable of giving 

 to the individual life that stable moral basis indispensable to it, 

 it is not because the State is an organisation too vast to be able 

 to touch the individual directly. The Church is a vaster organisa- 

 tion than the State ; and yet the Church is able to dominate the 

 believer's life in a far greater measure than the State is able to 

 dominate the citizen's. The reason for the inadequacy of the 

 State to meet the needs of the individual is to be sought in the 

 absence of any principle capable of touching the individual 

 directly enough to reform his moral nature. The doctrine of 

 State intervention does not contain any vivifying principle 

 powerful enough to limit the desires of the psychological life. 

 State intervention, when pushed to an excessive degree, tends 

 to favour the development of class egoism ; excessive pohtical 

 centralisation in a State whose poUty is based exclusively on 

 economic antagonisms cannot fail to have as a consequence the 

 deplorable spectacle of the dominant party in the State em- 

 ploying the organisation and resources of the State for the 

 furtherance of its own party interests, to the detriment of other 

 social categories. The extreme degree of egoism which can be 

 engendered by the consciousness of the power which the control 



