Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/22

6 would, says M. Tarde, thinking of France, reveal the hidden connection between the Panama affair and the use of dynamite, that is to say, between official culpability and organized crime. The society resulting from this self-criticism would, so M. Tarde continues, recognize as its own offspring not only its men of genius, but also its criminals; while claiming the honor of the one, it would with shame repent itself of the other. But it is not possible to pursue this illustration farther. Our point is made, if it be granted that the doctrine of the social organism tends so to magnify the inevitable onward movement of the state as to dwarf, or even altogether thrust out of sight, the necessity for a halt and a self-estimate. This pause and this reconsideration are the essential features of that continuous reconstruction and re-creation of society, to which is given the name development.

The foregoing illustration suggests that in an ideal society keen interest is taken in all persons and classes of persons who have failed to realize their true relation to their fellow-beings. Such an interest has carried us far away from Plato's quiet suppression of imperfect lives, and is the inspiring motive of systematic assistance to the bodily and mentally infirm. But that is not the precise point towards which this discussion has been moving, since systematic beneficence is quite compatible with the conception that the absolute social paradise can be gained merely by a more wide-spread beneficence of the same character. The exact point is this, that the existence of physical, mental, and moral imperfection of an abnormal kind should create the conviction that the actual condition of things is not the right condition, unless we have made up our minds to regard reformatories and asylums as necessary adjuncts of any conceivable millennium. If so, the outlook would be sufficiently dreary to warrant the most dismal conclusions of von Hartmann or Tolstoi. But it is clearly possible to anticipate physical and moral deformity by doing away with their causes, and those who, like Mr. Bradley, have such an aim are profoundly dissatisfied with the normal condition of