satisfy all their natural wants and desires, we might imagine that social sympathies and intellectual tastes would soon prevail over all the personal or egoistic tendencies. For though the latter were at first far the strongest, they would gradually die out for lack of occasions for exercise. Losing thus the powerful stimulus of selfinterest, which drives us to investigate the laws of nature, the intellectual activity of such beings would take an æsthetic direction, and would be devoted mainly to the task of providing forms of expression for the social sympathies. These social sympathies would become intense, for they would occupy the whole of life. But they would in the first instance be confined in the circle of the family; for the social life of States gains its principal interest from the ever-widening cooperation which is required in the struggle for existence against external difficulties. The natural creed of men would be an æsthetic Fetichism; and this, in the course of time, when men had learned to distinguish between action and life, would be changed into Positivism without needing to pass through the long intermediate stages of theology and metaphysics; while, in

A Beneficent Necessity.

35

the practical life, the affection of the family would broaden to the love of humanity, omitting the middle term of nationality. Finally, as the heart and the intelligence would continually gain a more marked ascendency over the practical activity, it would be natural that the spiritual power should rule the temporal, and that women should have the supremacy over

men.

this con

This ideal, however, only serves to illustrate by Uses of contrast the real course of things, which indeed flict. continually advances towards the same goal, but by a far longer and more stormy path, a path not of untroubled and peaceful growth, but of conflict, division, and pain. We shall find, however, as a kind of recompense for this hard process of mediation, that the final reconciliation of humanity with the world and with itself is far more perfect and conclusive, as it is a reconciliation which subordinates, while it satisfies, all the different elements of his nature. For a "sociality," reared on the basis of a fully developed yet conquered "personality," is a far higher ideal than such an imagined paradise, in which the struggle for existence, with all the intellectual and physical

It awakens and discip lines his

moral nature.

exertion which it involves, would be made unnecessary.

Our personal tendencies are strongest at first, and in their direct action they might lead, and do indeed often lead, to a sacrifice of society to the individual, and to the development in him of an extravagant pride and self-will, by which both heart and reason are corrupted. But man soon finds that he must stoop to conquer; that he must submit his action to the laws of nature, if he would make nature the servant of his purposes; that he must himself be instrumental to the well-being of others ere he can make them instruments of his own well-being. And in this submission of caprice and passion to reason and law, and of his own life to social ends, he gradually developes his intellectual powers and social sympathies till they gain a supremacy over those egoistic tendencies to which in the first instance they were subordinated. The highest ideal of man's life is to systematize this spontaneous process, and to turn into a conscious aim that moral and intellectual discipline of his nature, which in the past has been the unforeseen result of his effort after personal ends. We

Necessity makes us Free.

37

must, however, remember that this result would not have been possible unless the beginnings of these higher tendencies had existed in man from the first. No empirical process could ever have developed social sympathies in him, if he had been by nature utterly selfish, any more than it could have produced reason in a being who was devoid of even the germ of intelligence. But the whole history of human progress is just an account of the process whereby feeble social affections, using as a fulcrum the outward necessities of man's life, gradually secure to themselves the direction of all his activity. "The principal triumph of humanity consists in drawing its best means of perfecting itself from that very fatality which seems at first to condemn us to the most brutal egoism." For, "so soon as the personal instincts have placed us in a situation proper to satisfy our social tendencies, these, in virtue of their irresistible charm, commonly guide us to a course of conduct which they could not have had at first the force to dictate."

and social

These principles find their illustration in cer- Economical tain economical truths. In most conditions in progress. which human beings are placed, the individual is

capable of producing more than is immediately necessary for his wants; or, in other words, of accumulating wealth. Such accumulations make social existence possible, and coming, by gift or conquest, into the hands of the heads of society, become the means of realizing a division of labour, and providing the different classes of labourers with sustenance and instruments of production. Division of labour, again, while it secures increased efficiency, makes continually greater demands upon science for guidance, and thus stimulates the development of the intellectual life. Thus the hard external conditions under which man has to seek the satisfaction of his wants become a beneficent necessity, which forces him to increase his knowledge, and to co-operate with an ever-widening circle of his fellow-men. This co-operation, indeed, is not always conscious; and, even when it is conscious, it is not necessarily accompanied by social sympathy, as is shown by the fierce industrial struggles of capital with labour at the present day. Yet it is inevitable that it should in the long run produce a sense of the solidarity of mankind. "As each one really