therwise the individual might
derive no benefit from society. But if the truth that the individual
is an end as well as a means is recognised by moral philosophy, that
truth has also played at least an equally important part in political
philosophy. It is the very breath of the cry for liberty, equality,
and fraternity,--a cry wrung out from the heart of man by the system of
oppression which denied that the ordinary citizen had a right to be
anything but a means for procuring enjoyment to the members of the
ruling class. The truth that any one man--whatever his place in
society, whatever the colour of his skin--has as much right as any
other to be treated as an end and that no man was merely a means to the
enjoyment or happiness or well-being of another, was the charter for
the emancipation of slaves. It is still the magna charta for the
freedom of every member of the human race. No man is or can be a
chattel--a thing existing for no other purpose than to subserve the
interests of its owner and to be a means to his ends. But though from
the truth that the individual is in himself an end as well as a means,
it follows that all men have the right to {242} freedom, it does not
follow as a logical inference that all men are equal as means--as means
to the material happiness or to the moral improvement of society.

I need not further dwell upon the fact that statically as regards the
relations of men to one another in society at any moment, the truth is
fully recognised that the individual is not merely a means to the
happiness or well-being of others, but is also in himself an end. But
when we consider the proposition dynamically, when we wish to find out
the part it has played as one of the forces at work in evolution, we
find that its truth has been far from fully recognised--partly perhaps
because utilitarianism dates from a time when evolution, or the bearing
of it, was not understood. But the truth is at least of as great
importance dynamically as it is statically. And on one side, its truth
and the importance of its truth has been fully developed: that the
individual is a means to an end beyond him; and that, dynamically, he
has been and is a factor in evolution, and as a factor merely a means
and nothing else--all this has been worked out fully, if not to excess.
The other side of the truth, the fact that the individual is always an
end, has, however, {243} been as much neglected by the scientific
evolutioni