Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/140

 136 beginning to appear in our system of administration, and we are preparing to consider views which will have very far-reaching practical importance regarding the relations between central and local legislation and administration. The tendency to decentralise will undoubtedly proceed part passu with the tendency of the state to co-operate more definitely with the individual in working out his liberty.

When this truly democratic view of the state is definitely grasped, the ominous character of the objections I am now considering changes. The frown melts into a smile. The officers who call upon happy families to take to a state institution the latest born so that it may grow up under the inspiring impartiality of a number rather than be weighted and prejudiced by a soft-hearted mother and a family name, appear to be nothing more substantial than the hobgoblins of our youthful days which made us lie awake at nights or run home in the dark with our hair on end. Whole troops of anti-Socialist horrors dissolve into something less real than shadows when sane adults look at them a second time.

Like all crowds, all tribes, all companionships, the Socialist community will be swayed by two contrary motions, the coercion of discipline (the common life) and the freedom of will (the individual life); and each will have an absolute sway in some fields, and in others will have to accept compromises, limitations and modifications. But the prob-