Maciver very properly goes on to bring his conclusions to the pragmatic test, the test of practical results. He writes: “These false analogies ... are the sources of that most misleading antithesis which we draw between the individual and society, as though society were somehow other than its individuals.... Analyse these misleading analogies, and in the revelation of their falsity there is revealed also the falsity of this essential opposition of individual and society. Properly understood, the interests of ‘the individual’ are the interests of society[9].” But is it true that the interests of the individual are identical with the interests of society? Obviously not. We have only to think of the condemned criminal; of the mentally defective to whom every enlightened society should deny the right of procreation; of the young soldier who sacrifices his health, his limbs, his eyesight, or his life, and perhaps the welfare of his loved ones, in serving his country. It is true that the progress of society is essentially an approximation towards an ideal state in which this identification would be completed; but that is an ideal which can never be absolutely realised. Nor is it even true that the interests of society are identical with the interests of the majority of its members existing at any one time. It is, I think, highly probable that, if any great modern nation should unanimously and wholeheartedly embark upon a thorough-going scheme of state-socialism, the interests of the vast majority of individuals would be greatly promoted; they would be enabled to live more prosperously and comfortably with greater leisure and opportunity for the higher forms of activity. It is, however, equally probable that the higher interests of the nation would be gravely endangered, that it would enter upon a period of increasing stagnation and diminishing vitality and, after a few generations had passed away, would have slipped far down the slope which has led all great societies of the past to destruction.