Eugenics; Sexual ethics; Women -- Social and moral questions
This is why we cannot have too much Individualism, we cannot have too
much Socialism. They play into each other's hands. To strengthen one is
to give force to the other. The greater the vigour of both, the more
vitally a society is progressing. "I can no more call myself an
Individualist or a Socialist," said Henry George, "than one who
considers the forces by which the planets are held to their orbits could
call himself a centrifugalist or a centripetalist." To attain a society
in which Individualism and Socialism are each carried to its extreme
point would be to attain to the society that lived in the Abbey of
Thelema, in the City of the Sun, in Utopia, in the land of Zarathustra,
in the Garden of Eden, in the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a kingdom, no
doubt, that is, as Diderot expressed it, "diablement ideal." But to-day
we hold in our hands more certainly than ever before the clues that were
imperfectly foreshadowed by Plato, and what our fathers sought
ignorantly we may attempt by methods according to knowledge. No Utopia
was ever realized; and the ideal is a mirage that must ever elude us or
it would cease to be ideal. Yet all our progress, if progress there be,
can only lie in setting our faces towards that goal to which Utopias and
ideals point.
FOOTNOTES:
[248] In the narrow sense Socialism is identical with the definite
economic doctrine of the Collectivistic organization of the productive
and distributive work of society. It also possesses, as Bosanquet
remarks (in an essay on "Individualism and Socialism," in _The
Civilization of Christendom_), "a deeper meaning as a name for a human
tendency that is operative throughout history." Every Collectivist is a
Socialist, but not every Socialist would admit that he is a
Collectivist. "Moral Socialism," however, though not identical with
"Economic Socialism," tends to involve it.
[249] The term "Individualism," like the term "Socialism," is used in
varying senses, and is not, therefore, satisfactory to everyone. Thus
E.F.B. Fell (_The Foundations of Liberty_, 1908), regarding
"Individualism," as a merely negative term, prefers the term
"Personalism," to denote a more positive ideal. There is, however, by no
means as any necessity to consider "Individualism," a more negative term
than "Socialism."
[250] The inspiring appeal of Socialism to ardent minds is no doubt
ethical. "The ethics of Socialism," says Kirkup, "are closely akin to
the ethics of Christianity, if not identical with them." That, perhaps,
is why Socialism is so attractive to some minds, so repugnant to others.
[251] This idea was elaborated by Eimer in an appendix to his _Organic
Evolution_ on the idea of the individual in the animal kingdom.
[252] The term "socialism" is said to date from about the year 1835.
Leroux claimed that he invented it, in opposition to the term
"individualism," but at that period it had become so necessary and so
obvious a term that it is difficult to say positively by whom it was
first used.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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