a society, each member of which should be a complete and admirable personality, was an ethical ideal not to be confounded with the indiscriminate production of things that are good and valuable wherever they may chance to be developed. In such an ideal some form of society is obviously included. But equally for the growth of the contemplative nature, man, who is not a disembodied spirit, needs certain material conditions that he can only secure in co-operation. For the two sides of his nature, practical and contemplative alike, society is thus necessary.

But it by no means follows that any given society with its peculiar division of labour between its members is as defensible as any other, and that what it assigns to any man as his duty must give him all the chances of self-realization that his 'true self' needs. The most ardent champion of the State would usually admit that some forins of organization are better than others. Now in what can this superiority consist except in the wider opportunities they afford to their members? The goodness of the State consists in the goodness of its members. If then the goodness of the members must take the twofold direction traced above, if it is essentially a balance of diverse activities, then any State which fails to afford scope for development in both ways to all its members is ill-planned and ill-constructed, and it can by no means be allowed that a man who takes his appointed place in so ill-devised an edifice must be achieving the highest that lies within his capacity.

The deficiencies of the State again may arise from two causes, from internal folly or weakness, or from the inexorable pressure of outside forces. For however well fashioned a State might be in itself the wickedness

of its neighbours or the niggardliness of Nature may force it to summon all its powers to the simplest, most fundamental of its tasks, the maintenance of the physical life and strength of its members. Against war, famine, and disease, the best social architect may be helpless. If he cannot prevent them, he must be prepared for a concentration of energy on the elementary tasks they impose on statesmanship. In such concentration, too, man finds a peculiar pleasure. A sort of instinct in us makes us regard man's first and fundamental business in the world as most fulfilled when the wide range of his powers is forgotten and all his energies are summoned to a straightforward fight with death. It would seem that as the early call of Nature is then heard once more, and man sinks in the primitive struggle for life down to the level of his brother animals, a kind of exhilaration wrought of a keener sense of reality gets hold of him, and it is not with unmixed pain that he sees all the provisions made by centuries of foresight and invention against the primitive natural enemies swept away, his leisure, his accomplishments taken from him, and the engrossing business of the moment made once more a matter of life and death'. This is, in fact, the last and greatest instance of the principle that intensity of experience may atone for narrowness. Yet it is fortunate that this can only be the exception. No sane man wishes life to be perpetually reduced to this level. And it is a real diminution of the powers and possibilities of humanity when all energy has to be strained in such directions. Now just as accident or misfortune may for the time reduce an individual to the severities of such a struggle, so too the State may be forced by outer necessities to enlist all the energies of its members in a fight for

existence. But the normal modern State is in no such predicament. It has open to it resources that might keep all natural needs satisfied and leave an abundant surplus of time and power for the more subtle and complex needs of man's spirit. If therefore it confines some of its members to the cruel simplicity of a struggle for subsistence, it discloses a fault within itself that cannot be shifted on to Nature. The presence of such maladjustments has two evil results: the cramping starvation of capacity among the unfortunate, and in the stronger or luckier members of society a constant doubt whether in such circumstances, before their artistic sense or even their desire for religious worship is satisfied, duty would not make them spend all their strength and time in a determined effort to correct the faults of the social order. To men perplexed in this way it is the merest trifling to answer 'You have simply to fill your place in society'. No definite sense could be obtained from this unless it were 'Fulfil your professional duties, or your part as a father or a son'; and precisely the question which wearies the unfortunate man is whether his profession has any social justification, or whether he ought to train his son up to the position in society that custom would warrant, but the man's own conscience finds it hard to approve.

A somewhat analogous difficulty engaged Aristotle in the Politics when he put the problem whether the good man and the good citizen are identical. He too found that the identity could only be perfect in a perfect State. But in the form it has taken in this discussion it reaches further than the hackneyed question of obedience to law. No definite transgression of the law is the course that suggests itself to a conscience troubled in the way

described, but rather a refusal to accept that status in society which tradition and public opinion expect a man to occupy: it is the problem of the recalcitrant aristocrat, rather than of the revolutionary anarchist. Yet to a writer like Hegel both Tolstoy and the Nihilists would necessarily be condemned for the same reason-namely that they are setting up private conviction against the objective system of rights and duties according to which universal spirit has built up the State. And even to a more sympathetic observer it is plain that any who thus put themselves in opposition to the framework of society must first ask themselves whether their State is like Seithenyn's wall composed of good and rotten elements so indissolubly mixed that to shake the rotten is impossible without threatening the sound. Into the infinite subtleties of casuistry that may here arise there could be small profit in entering. It is important to see plainly what is the problem from our present standpoint. In man's nature we found a complexity of powers, the harmonious realization of which is goodness. These powers fall mainly under two heads-the practical and the contemplative. Neither can be reduced to the other, and the chief problem of self-management is how to blend the two. The State is necessary if this goodness is to exist. But its influence is different in the different aspects of goodness. Practical life is to a large extent the activity of a citizen qua citizen: contemplative life is not, though the State can do much to render it possible and to sustain its vigour. Lastly the due proportion of the two cannot be settled by any man except with reference to the needs of the State: it largely depends on his professional functions. A State in which wealth is very unequally distributed is usually a State in which

there may be goodness in very pronounced degree but seldom an ideal balance or proportion of activities: and generally the division of labour, the distinctions of class found in the actual States of which we have knowledge, seldom produce a satisfactory proportion or harmony of activities in individual citizens.

I V

THE EXALTATION OF SOCIETIES

OVER THEIR MEMBERS

§ 1. Introduction

I.

IT has hitherto been assumed that these questions must be discussed from the standpoint of the individual who needs various forms of social life as the milieu in which to develop his powers, but may thus find himself entangled in a network of special professional duties which through their monotonous persistence destroy the harmony of his character as it might have been. From this point of view small comfort is given to a man by assuring him of the public utility of his life, for his trouble is precisely that the subordination or even the ruthless excision of some real and valuable powers within him may seem to be necessary for the general good: and no comfort at all can be obtained if it is supposed that this harsh dealing with the individual might under a more wisely planned government be more or less completely avoided. But the extreme champion of civic duties might urge that justice has not really been