ism. Individual
initiative, so far from being discouraged, should be stimulated; and
yet we should remember that, as society develops and grows more
complex, we continually find that things which once it was desirable
to leave to individual initiative can, under the changed conditions,
be performed with better results by common effort. It is quite
impossible, and equally undesirable, to draw in theory a hard and fast
line which shall always divide the two sets of cases. This every one
who is not cursed with the pride of the closet philosopher will see,
if he will only take the trouble to think about some of our commonest
phenomena. For instance, when people live on isolated farms or in
little hamlets, each house can be left to attend to its own drainage
and water supply; but the mere multiplication of families in a given
area produces new problems which, because they differ in size, are
found to differ not only in degree but in kind from the old; and the
questions of drainage and water supply have to be considered from the
common standpoint. It is not a matter for abstract dogmatizing to
decide when this point is reached; it is a matter to be tested by
practical experiment. Much of the discussion about socialism and
individualism is entirely pointless, because of failure to agree on
terminology. It is not good to be the slave of names. I am a strong
individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it
is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the
community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things
better than if they were left to individual action. The individualism
which finds its expression in the abuse of physical force is checked
very early in the growth of civilization, and we of to-day should in
our turn strive to shackle or destroy that individualism which
triumphs by greed and cunning, which exploits the weak by craft
instead of ruling them by brutality. We ought to go with any man in
the effort to bring about justice and the equality of opportunity, to
turn the tool user more and more into the tool owner, to shift burdens
so that they can be more equitably borne. The deadening effect on any
race of the adoption of a logical and extreme socialistic system could
not be overstated; it would spell sheer destruction; it would produce
grosser wrong and outrage, fouler immorality, than any existing
system. But this does not mean that we may not with great advantage
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