On the other hand, the Associationists must be carefully distinguished from the economists of the Liberal school. Fortunately this is not very difficult, for by means of these very associations they claim to be able to create a new social _milieu_. They are as anxious as the Liberals for the free exercise of individual initiative, but they believe that under existing conditions, except in the case of a few privileged individuals, this very initiative is being smothered. They believe that liberty and individuality never can expand unless transplanted into a new environment. But this new environment will not come of itself. It must be created, just as the gardener must build a conservatory if he is to secure a requisite environment. Each one has his own particular recipe for this, and none of them is above thinking that his own is the best.[507] It is this conception of an artificial society set up in the midst of present social conditions, bound by strict limitations which to some extent isolate it from its surroundings, that has won for the system its name of Utopian Socialism. Had the Associationists only declared that the social environment can and ought to be modified, despite the so-called permanent and immutable laws, just as man himself is capable of modification, they would have enunciated an important truth and would have forestalled all those who are to-day seeking a solution of the social question in syndicalism, in co-operation, and in the garden-city ideal. On the other hand, had they succeeded in carrying out their plans on an extensive scale, if we may judge by the desire to evade them on the part of those experimented on, it seems probable that the new kind of liberty would have proved less welcome than the liberty which is enjoyed under the present constitution of society.