[33] The Spirit of Laws, book viii, chap. 19. CHAPTER IX MODERN COMMUNICATION: INDIVIDUALITY THE QUESTION—WHY COMMUNICATION SHOULD FOSTER INDIVIDUALITY—THE CONTRARY OR DEAD-LEVEL THEORY—RECONCILIATION OF THESE VIEWS—THE OUTLOOK AS REGARDS INDIVIDUALITY. It is a question of utmost interest whether these changes do or do not contribute to the independence and productivity of the individual mind. Do they foster a self-reliant personality, capable at need of pursuing high and rare aims, or have they rather a levelling tendency, repressive of what is original and characteristic? There are in fact opposite opinions regarding this matter, in support of either of which numerous expressions by writers of some weight might be collected. From one point of view it would appear that the new communication ought to encourage individuality of all kinds; it makes it easier to get away from a given environment and to find support in one more congenial. The world has grown more various and at the same time more accessible, so that one having a natural bent should be the more able to find influences to nourish it. If he has a turn, say, for entomology, he can readily, through journals, correspondence and meetings, get in touch with a group of men similarly inclined, and with a congenial tradition. And so with any sect of religion, or politics, or art, or what not; if there are in the civilized world a few like-minded people it is comparatively easy for them to get together in spirit and encourage one another in their peculiarity. It is a simple and recognized principle of development that an enlarged life in the organism commonly involves greater differentiation in its parts. That the social enlargement of recent times has in general this character seems plain, and has been set forth in much detail by some writers, notably by Herbert Spencer. Many, indeed, find the characteristic evil of the new era in an extreme individuality, a somewhat anarchic differentiation and working at cross purposes. “Probably there was never any time,” says Professor Mackenzie, “in which men tended to be so unintelligible to each other as they are now, on account of the diversity of the objects with which they are engaged, and of the points of view at which they stand.”[34]