The third question which relates itself to moral progress is that of
Government. Now Government, I need hardly say, is not an end in itself.
It is a device which man has set up to help him in attaining the true
end of his life. To make up our minds how we ought to be governed is
therefore impossible unless we have previously made up our minds how we
ought to live. What might be a good government for a people whose end is
industrial success might be a very bad one for a people who had some
other end in view. Well, then, are we well governed at the present time?
Are we better governed than we were? Has progress taken place in this
department? Plainly we cannot answer these questions unless we have
chosen our end in life and are morally satisfied with it. In the history
of modern states we discover a tendency, more strongly marked in some
quarters than in others, towards that form of democracy which is called
responsible self-government. Government of the people, for the people,
by the people. The people are going to govern themselves. But they may
do so in a thousand different ways--each of which has a different moral
value. A people may go wrong just as fatally in governing itself as in
being governed by some external authority. I confess that nothing I can
learn from the history of government entirely reassures me on this
point. I see everywhere progress towards organization, but then one is
bound to ask on what ulterior end is this organization directed? I see
everywhere a growing subordination of the individual to the State. This
may or may not be a very good thing. What _kind of State_ is it to which
the individual is becoming subordinated? There are great differences
among them--some seem to me, one in particular at the present time,
thoroughly bad, and I cannot see that the individual gains morally by
being subordinated to such a State--at least if he gains in one
direction he loses more in another.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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