^{page 4 note 1} Philosophy, vol. xi, pp. 301–2.Google Scholar

^{page 6 note 1} But this, too, involves some apprehension of the structure and content of the absolute Real, though an abstract one that can only be filled out a posteriori.

^{page 8 note 1} Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, p. 31.

^{page 16 note 1} Sometimes an even more radical argument in favour of the priority of society has been put forward, viz. that because the individual derives life itself and all the benefits and values of life from his social environment, there is no limit to the power rightly possessed by society over the life and activity of the individual, and that his duties towards his society must have priority over all his individual ends and even his conception of moral right. Plato himself comes very near to such a conception of the relations of the citizen and the State in the Crito: “Since you were brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us (i.e. the laws of the State) can you deny that you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before you ?” (50E). But such a view is based, it seems to me, upon a false analogy of the growth and dependence of the individual on his social environment; it is very like the argument of Hardy's reasoning yokel that because a mite is born in cheese and lives on cheese all his life, he is made of cheese. But even a crystal does not grow simply by accretion: much less does the individual absorb his social environment and compose himself of it. The environment is no more than his opportunity; by his response to it he evokes his individual potencies, but it does not constitute him: the individuals constitute it. Doubtless the society is one of the most useful types of environment for the evoking of the higher potentialities of human nature: Homini nihil homine utilius (B.D.S., Eth. IV, xviii, Sch.). Thus as in love a derived perfection is fashioned out of inevitable impediment, so also in general society a perfection is derived from the mutual assistance of the members. We need one another just as in a lesser degree we need all external things: because we are finite and must search unceasingly for completion in and by means of another, must find ourselves in response to the stimulus that wakens us from without. This is a power in society founded upon real weakness in the individuals, but it registers rather a potency in the individuals that in their weakness fashion for themselves a cure, than a power in society itself as an independent microcosm of Nature. Society, indeed, may so develop as to have ends, and to use means, that conflict with the good of the individual, or even with his judgment of right, for there is no axiom that society and the individual must agree; it may even be necessary in such a case for society to coerce the individual: it will remain morally right for the individual to resist that coercion, and there are strict limits in the nature of things to the power of society or any external thing over the human will. And such a conflict between the individual and society will surprise the philosopher least of all men, for he recognizes the relative irrationality of social life, and knows that it is out of such conflicts that society is gradually brought to such perfection as it is capable of as a flexible instrument of human purpose.