Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/385

 DIFFICULTIES OF INDIVIDUALISM 363 course, is of ll time--but our increasing consciousness of it. Instead of unconscious fctors we become deliberate.gents, either to id or resist the developments coming to our notice. Human selection ccordingly becomes, to the distress of Mr. Herbert Spencer, the min form of nturl selection, nd functional dpt- tion replaces the struggle for existence s the min fctor in sociM progress. Mn becomes the midwife of the gret womb of Time, nd necessarily undertakes the responsibility for the new economic relations which he brings into existence. Hence the growing wlue of correct principles of social ction, of wlid ideals for social spirtion. Hence, therefore, the import- nce, for wel or for woe, of the change in social ideals nd prin- ciples which mrks off the present generation of Socialists from the surviving economists nd statesmen brought up in the ' Mnchester school.' We my, of course, prefer not to ccept the wtchwords or shibboleths of either prty; we my crefully guaxd ourselves ginst 'the flsehood of extremes'; we my believe that we cn relly steer  middle course. This comforting reflection of the practical mn is, however, n unphilosophicM delusion. As ech difficulty of the present dy comes up for solution, our ction or inaction must, for ll our cution, necessarily incline to one side or the other. We my help to modify the social organism either in the direction of  more general Col- lectivism or in that of  more perfect Individualism; it will be hard, even by doing nothing, to leave the blnce just s it ws. It becomes, ccordiugly, of vital importance to examine not only our practical policy but lso our ideals ud principles of ction, even if we do not intend to follow these out to their logical conclusion. It is not esy, t the present dy, to be quite fir to the opi- nions of the little knot of noble-minded enthusiasts who broke for us the chains of the oligarchic tyranny of the eighteenth century. Their work was essentially destructive, and this is not the place in which to estimate how ably they carried on their statical nlysis, or how completely they misunderstood the social results of the industrial revolution which ws flsifying 11 their predictions lmost before they were uttered. But we my, perhaps, not unfairly sum up s follows the principles which guided them in dealing with the difficulties of social life: that the best govern- ment is that which governs least; that the utmost possible scope should be 11owed to untrammelled individual enterprise; that open competition nd complete freedom from legal restrictions furnish the best guarantees of  healthy industrial community;