ividualism in a sense rational.]

While a desirable form of society entirely without the family is hard to
conceive, yet the general tendency in historic times, and the marked
tendency in periods of ripe development, has been toward individualism.
Individualism is in one sense the only possible ideal; for whatever
social order may be most valuable can be valuable only for its effect on
conscious individuals. Man is of course a social animal and needs
society first that he may come safely into being, and then that he may
have something interesting to do. But society itself is no animal and
has neither instincts, interests, nor ideals. To talk of such things is
either to speak metaphorically or to think mythically; and myths, the
more currency they acquire, pass the more easily into superstitions. It
would be a gross and pedantic superstition to venerate any form of
society in itself, apart from the safety, breadth, or sweetness which it
lent to individual happiness. If the individual may be justly
subordinated to the state, not merely for the sake of a future freer
generation, but permanently and in the ideal society, the reason is
simply that such subordination is a part of man's natural devotion to
things rational and impersonal, in the presence of which alone he can be
personally happy. Society, in its future and its past, is a natural
object of interest like art or science; it exists, like them, because
only when lost in such rational objects can a free soul be active and
immortal. But all these ideals are terms in some actual life, not alien
ends, important to nobody, to which, notwithstanding, everybody is to be
sacrificed.

Individualism is therefore the only ideal possible. The excellence of
societies is measured by what they provide for their members. A cumbrous
and sanctified social order manifests dulness, and cannot subsist
without it. It immerses man in instrumentalities, weighs him down with
atrophied organs, and by subjecting him eternally to fruitless
sacrifices renders him stupid and superstitious and ready to be himself
tyrannical when the opportunity occurs. A sure sign of having escaped
barbarism is therefore to feel keenly the pragmatic values belonging to
all institutions, to look deep into the human sanctions of things.
Greece was on this ground more civilised than Rome, and Athens more than
Sparta. Ill-governed communities may be more intelligent than
well-governed ones, when people feel the moti