It may be admitted without debate that the theory just sketched does express at least one phase both of moral and political experience. Even the routine observance of the law may stiffen a man in the maintenance of an ideal against odds, as in the case of the poverty-stricken father who may feel the compulsory school law as a deliverance from temptation. The theory serves to suggest, at least, the extreme complexity of desires and impulses and to indicate how false, both in theory and in practice, is the superficial notion of the individual as a simple, ready-made entity. It suggests what psychological analysis has since shown more concretely, that human nature is a tangled thicket of impulses and tendencies, having various degrees of importance and requiring co-ordination and organization before they can lead to any effective achievement either within or without the self. And finally it cuts the ground from under that bane of ethical discussion, the superficial distinction between egoism and altruism; for it shows how little concrete interests permit themselves to be thus dichotomized.
Nevertheless, while the theory goes definitely beyond the ready-made individual, it comes dangerously near to stopping with another ready-made entity, the social organization. It is probably true that no such result was intended, and yet there is a definite tendency to over-emphasize the ultimateness of the social order. At least, this is true of Mr. Bradley and Professor Bosanquet, though it is certainly far less true of T. H. Green, who has been accused by Professor Bosanquet of over-caution in estimating the value of the state to its members.[1] Characteristically the emphasis of the idealists was upon the ethical necessity of finding a station in the objective order, as if the system were final while the individual is only casual. The argument starts from a sound principle, viz., the principle that ultimately the individual's claim to a right has to be judged in the light of the common good, but this does not really exclude the other principle, viz., that any organization of the common good has also to give scope to individual accomplishment. Thus it is quite evident as a matter of history that many claims to rights
- ↑ Op. cit., preface, p. ix.
