s governed by this end, it is
among the most important of human activities. In so far as it is
diverted from it, it may be harmless, amusing, or even exhilarating to
those who carry it on, but it possesses no more social significance
than the orderly business of ants and bees, the strutting of peacocks,
or the struggles of carnivorous animals over carrion.

Men have normally appreciated this fact, however unwilling or unable
they may have been to act upon it; and therefore from time to time, in
so far as they have been able to control the forces of violence and
greed, they have adopted various expedients for emphasizing the social
quality of economic activity. It is not easy, however, to emphasize it
effectively, because to do so requires a constant effort of will,
against which egotistical instincts are in rebellion, and because, if
that will is to prevail, it must be embodied in some social {9} and
political organization, which may itself become so arbitrary,
tyrannical and corrupt as to thwart the performance of function instead
of promoting it. When this process of degeneration has gone far, as in
most European countries it had by the middle of the eighteenth century,
the indispensable thing is to break the dead organization up and to
clear the ground. In the course of doing so, the individual is
emancipated and his rights are enlarged; but the idea of social purpose
is discredited by the discredit justly attaching to the obsolete order
in which it is embodied.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in the new industrial societies
which arose on the ruins of the old regime the dominant note should
have been the insistence upon individual rights, irrespective of any
social purpose to which their exercise contributed. The economic
expansion which concentrated population on the coal-measures was, in
essence, an immense movement of colonization drifting from the south
and east to the north and west; and it was natural that in those
regions of England, as in the American settlements, the characteristic
philosophy should be that of the pioneer and the mining camp. The
change of social quality was profound. But in England, at least, it
was gradual, and the "industrial revolution," though catastrophic in
its effects, was only the visible climax of generations of subtle moral
change. The rise of modern economic relations, which may be dated in
England from the latter half of the seventeenth century, was coincident