found to work badly. Even when legislators believed in laisser faire and practised it, they were directly and consciously accepting the complications of economic competition as the surest path to national prosperity. In so far as this will not hold, the legislator may strive to dispense with economic competition partly or entirely. We have considered various ways in which the immediate interest of this or that employer might be contrary to the ultimate interests of the majority. In exactly such a position Factory Legislation was passed in England: the motives may have been the purest philanthropy, but the result was increased business efficiency.

So far then the law may be regarded as the framework within which economic transactions can be completed; the regulation of certain methods adopted by Society to gain an approved goal, now duly recognized as methods not taken as necessary and ultimate forces with which all government and all society must comply. But law has wider interests than merely to regulate or to improve the operations of the market. Even though factory legislation had not been of advantage merely towards increasing wealth in the narrow sense so far as money can measure wealth, still from another stand-point it might have been defended: just as at the present day men can quite reasonably advocate social legislation which in their opinion will diminish wealth's rate of increase, if thereby the national income may be better distributed, or workers may have more leisure to be human beings. Further the law is interested in the relations of human beings in other places than the market. It controls the existence of the family, the club and the corporation: and in all these bodies it is obvious that men are not meeting one another merely as buyers and sellers. They are united

by various bonds of affection or of theoretic interests, in which they help one another, but yet their co-operation is not barely to be described as exchange. The attempt to construct the relations of friend to friend on the model of those between debtor and creditor is one of the least successful passages in Aristotle:1 in the most elevated forms of intercourse men clearly do not consider how much must be rendered in return for how much; they do not aim at a bargain, and there is a real meaning in contrasting business principles and business methods with the more courtly and warm-hearted forms of society. But these, too, have their place within the State, and though legislation naturally is concerned most with the sphere of contract, the rendering of service, the safeguarding of fair expectations, it can and does make rules against cruelty and slander, which look beyond mere economic damage done to a man. Further in the positive side of the State's work where the legislature insists that its members shall be educated there is no reason for the cynical supposition that this is purely and simply because education pays in the world-market. The last proof of the wider interests of the State, and the advance therefore made when we pass from the economic man to the legal subject, might be found in the close connexion which in theory, as well as in historical fact, must be allowed to exist between State and Church.

§ 4. The Member of Society

BUT here we are already brought to a view of human nature which transcends that of laws and politics. The Church is merely the most exalted, the most historically famous of all those groupings of men in which the fuller 1 I refer to such discussions as are found in viii. 14 of the Ethics.

realization of his capacities makes man far more than the mere producer of things to be enjoyed. At the economic stage man is considered simply as offering service for reward, and the assumption underlying the economist's whole account of the market is that men desire the service to cost as little as possible, the reward to be as rich as possible. But men do not associate with one another simply to earn the maximum of enjoyments. The value of common life, of mutual service, of friendly co-operation entirely goes beyond the pocketing of some wage in amusements or necessities for a service rendered purely as a means to an end. These other values, too, need society or they cannot be realized: but not the mere association of buyer and seller. Singer and accompanist, friend and friend, mother and child, worshipper and priest, quite clearly do not associate on this footing: and it is the essence of cynicism here as in all other things to describe the higher in terms of the lower. But these various associations nevertheless exist in the State, they are to some extent controlled by the State's laws, and they must be regarded as necessary to that realization of good life which is on all serious accounts of the matter the final cause of the State's own existence. Now here we clearly pass beyond a legal stand-point and regard man no longer simply as a legal subject, but in the widest sense as a member of society. Here, perhaps, also a further distinction may be useful. To revert to the original distinction of practical and theoretic activity in both these branches of human life society is essential as much in this fuller sense as in the earlier meaning of economic machine. But to the practical forms of activity society is necessary in a quite peculiar way: for the practical life of a man consists in behaviour towards his fellows. The theoretic

activities are cultivated in association with others, and at any rate in the beginning of knowledge man thinks best in partnership. The singer has to co-operate with his accompanist, the conductor with his orchestra, and for any drama or symphony it is necessary that the beautiful should emerge out of a union of intelligence and purpose. Yet the final appreciation of beauty in each listener is a wholly individual thing, possible if there is no one else in the audience, and though strengthened by sympathy still an exclusive possession. The essence of the activity does not lie in any direct relation to other people. Thus the conquests of science and art are won through co-operation, the fruits of affection and loyalty consist in co-operation. The learned society therefore, the artistic school, the dramatic company, aim at an enjoyment and appreciation of the true or the beautiful in each of their members taken separately. The family or the group of friends have as their aim not some enjoyment or accomplishment in the members taken separately, but simply the goodness of mutual service and devotion. In these various groups based partly on natural kinship, partly on acquired friendship, partly on professional or artistic purposes, the nature of personality finds its fullest development and expression. The separation of the two main kinds of society here is not, of course, absolute. The family may be an artistic club, the professional group may be further welded together by bonds of loyalty or even affection; nowhere has the real power and depth of human society been shown so clearly as in clubs like the group of Socrates' friends and disciples, or the names that surround Dr. Johnson where the pursuit of knowledge and beauty was so intimately coloured by warmth of friendship. Ties of

this kind, of course, enter also into the forms of association discussed above. National feeling has in its intense development something of the force of family affection or the common loyalty of a school. Even in the economic framework of things, an association like a Trade Union may exist primarily for Collective Bargaining', but it justifies itself also by the common respect and loyalty soon created within it. For the spirit of self-devotion breaks through even those forms of organization which seemed based on pure self-interest. But it is neither in the market-place nor even in a national assembly that the fullest outpouring of human affection, the highest flights of disinterested goodness may be expected. For this reason in the last stage in the progress we have traced, man has been labelled 'member of society' and not merely 'citizen'. Whether the two coincide has already been answered implicitly in the negative. Let me state more directly the grounds on which this answer is based.

5.

The State and other Forms of Society THROUGHOUT this discussion the attempt has been to show how if a personality is to open out its powers in the true proportions, it must exist in society. In the first place man must live, and he can only secure a living in combination with his fellows. Such combination consists essentially in a distribution of labour, and a consequent division of the fruits of labour. The terms on which this is effected are appropriate to the market where apparently contending forces bargain with one another and one man's loss is another's gain. But the concealed intention of the process is the enriching not merely of the successful bargainer, but of the unsuccessful too.