ood of all. I am not for the moment either attacking
or defending any economic system. I point out only that this is the
position which according to the organic or harmonic view of society must
be made good by any rational defence of grave inequality in the
distribution of wealth. In relation to equality, indeed, it appears,
oddly enough, that the harmonic principle can adopt wholesale, and even
expand, one of the "Rights of Man" as formulated in 1789--"Social
distinctions can only be founded upon common utility." If it is really
just that A should be superior to B in wealth or power or position, it
is only because when the good of all concerned is considered, among whom
B is one, it turns out that there is a net gain in the arrangement as
compared with any alternative that we can devise.

If we turn from equality to liberty, the general lines of argument have
already been indicated, and the discussion of difficulties in detail
must be left for the next chapter. It need only be repeated here that on
the harmonic principle the fundamental importance of liberty rests on
the nature of the "good" itself, and that whether we are thinking of the
good of society or the good of the individual. The good is something
attained by the development of the basal factors of personality; a
development proceeding by the widening of ideas, the awakening of the
imagination, the play of affection and passion, the strengthening and
extension of rational control. As it is the development of these
factors in each human being that makes his life worth having, so it is
their harmonious interaction, the response of each to each, that makes
of society a living whole. Liberty so interpreted cannot, as we have
seen, dispense with restraint; restraint, however, is not an end but a
means to an end, and one of the principal elements in that end is the
enlargement of liberty.

But the collective activity of the community does not necessarily
proceed by coercion or restraint. The more securely it is founded on
freedom and general willing assent, the more it is free to work out all
the achievements in which the individual is feeble or powerless while
combined action is strong. Human progress, on whatever side we consider
it, is found to be in the main social progress, the work of conscious or
unconscious co-operation. In this work voluntary association plays a
large and increasing part. But the State is one form of association
among others, distinguished