216 The Ideal State 



accord," and he contemplates a time " in which the 

 individual will have reached such a stage of develop- 

 ment that it will afford him the highest pleasure to act 

 in a manner conducive to the interests of the social 

 organism even when such conduct may appear antago- 

 nistic to his own interests, and so, like parental sacrifice, 

 lead the individual to obtain the highest satisfaction 

 in voluntarily sacrificing himself in the interests of the 

 social organism." 



The theories associated with these names mark 

 stages in the evolution of thought in regard to social 

 amelioration, and they emphasise the influence of the 

 altruistic teachings of Jesus upon the minds of men. 

 No doubt this influence in its earlier manifestations 

 has been quite unconscious, but we behold it, there, 

 silently exerting its power, and altering gradually the 

 whole aspect of human society. And the names of 

 Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Bentham, J. S. Mill, and 

 Herbert Spencer ought not to be forgotten, and should 

 be inscribed in letters of gold among the scroll of great 

 ones who have made the history of modern times. 

 " The greatest happiness of the greatest number " was 

 a concept of a high order, and the further advance to 

 " a stage of development in which it will afford the 

 individual the highest pleasure to act in a manner con- 

 ducive to the interests of the social organism, even 

 when such conduct may appear antagonistic to his 

 own interests," was a still greater. For the first time 

 we have an economic philosopher accepting the doc- 

 trine of the necessity of self-sacrifice as a supreme factor 

 in the evolution of human society. It remained to 

 Benjamin Kidd to make two discoveries — one, that 

 this gradual effort to ameliorate the conditions of 

 society, upon which alone the permanence of our 

 civilisation depends, was the direct result of the in- 

 fluence in men's minds of the altruism of Christianity ; 



