SOCIAL VERSUS INDIVIDUAL INTEREST 487 



could prevent the exploitation of the many in the interests of 

 the few. And, above all things, society as such is not capable 

 of giving that value to iadividual hfe which a supra-rational 

 principle can give. Thus it does not respond to the second 

 condition which we deemed essential to the constitution of a 

 social force. It is true that there are individuals who are 

 capable of working and of dying for society, who are content 

 with that fragile immortaUty which consists in liviug as a hero 

 in history. But this historical inunortahty is the lot of the 

 very few ; and when society comes and claims from the toiler 

 whose humdrum hfe briags him but httle profit and little happi- 

 ness, the sacrifice of a greater iadividual profit in the interests 

 of society, in the interests of the race to come, that toiler might 

 reply that the hypothetical interests of the race to come are not 

 his interests ; and what superior principles could society then 

 invoke ? In requiring a sacrifice of immediate iaterests in the 

 name of interests which are not immediate, peremptory reasons 

 must be given, reasons which transcend the reason of the 

 individual, which are imperative, which admit of no discussion, 

 which are supra-rational. Otherwise it will always be a question 

 of the conflict of interests ; and when the iadividual interest 

 comes into conflict with the social interest, the latter must be 

 sustained by a principle which is imperatively convincing. 

 To be convincing, it must, in return for the sacrifice of immediate 

 individual interest, confer a value on individual Ufe which is not 

 only immediate but permanent. 



The problem of the division of labour shows us this more 

 clearly. As Herbert Spencer has said : " While rudimentary, 

 a society is aU warrior, all hunter, all hut-builder, all tool-maker ; 

 every part fulfils for itself all needs. Progress to a stage 

 characterised by a permanent army can go on only as there arise 

 arrangements for supplying that army with food, clothes, and 

 munitions of war by the rest. If here the population occupies 

 itself solely with agriculture and there with mining, if these 



