This optimism, strengthened and intensified, deepened their distrust of every kind of social reform undertaken with a view to protecting the weak, whether by the masters themselves or through the intervention of the State. Liberty, so they thought, would finally remedy the evils which it seemed to create, while State intervention merely aggravated the evils it sought to correct.[693] What seems still more singular is their scant respect for “associationism” as outlined in our previous chapter. It found just as little favour as State control. They did not display quite the same contempt for it as was shown by the Revolutionists. It was no longer actually condemned, and they put forward a formal plea for the right of combination, in politics, in religion, industry, commerce, and labour. But they always interpreted it as a mere right of coalition or association with a view to protecting or strengthening individual activity. Association as an instrument of social transformation that would set up co-operation in place of competition, and which in the name of solidarity demanded certain sacrifices from the individual for the sake of the community, was not to the liking of the Liberal Individualist school. Even the less ambitious and less complete forms, such as the co-operative and the mutual aid society, seemed to them to be full of illusions and deceptions, if not actually vicious.[694] The most striking characteristic of the French school is its unbounded faith in individual liberty. This distinctive trait has never been lacking throughout the century and a half that separates us from the time of the Physiocrats. Its most eminent representatives, while spurning the title Orthodox or Classical, have repeatedly declared that they wish for no other name than Liberal.[695] It is also marked by a certain want of sympathy with the masses in their sufferings. Science, doubtless, does not make for sympathy. But what we merely wish to note is the presence of a certain tendency—already very pronounced in Malthus—to believe that people’s misfortunes result from their vices or their improvident habits.[696] The Liberal school was quite prepared to extend an enthusiastic welcome to the teaching of Darwin. He pointed out that a necessary condition of progress was the natural selection of the best by the elimination of the incapable, and that the price paid is not a bit too high. Belief in the virtue of competition led to the glorification of the struggle for life.