.
What is sometimes called a benevolent interest in others may be but an
unwitting mask for an attempt to dictate to them what their good shall
be, instead of an endeavor to free them so that they may seek and find
the good of their own choice. Social efficiency, even social service,
are hard and metallic things when severed from an active acknowledgment
of the diversity of goods which life may afford to different persons,
and from faith in the social utility of encouraging every individual to
make his own choice intelligent.

3. Culture as Aim. Whether or not social efficiency is an aim which is
consistent with culture turns upon these considerations. Culture means
at least something cultivated, something ripened; it is opposed to
the raw and crude. When the "natural" is identified with this rawness,
culture is opposed to what is called natural development. Culture is
also something personal; it is cultivation with respect to appreciation
of ideas and art and broad human interests. When efficiency is
identified with a narrow range of acts, instead of with the spirit and
meaning of activity, culture is opposed to efficiency. Whether called
culture or complete development of personality, the outcome is identical
with the true meaning of social efficiency whenever attention is given
to what is unique in an individual--and he would not be an individual if
there were not something incommensurable about him. Its opposite is
the mediocre, the average. Whenever distinctive quality is developed,
distinction of personality results, and with it greater promise for
a social service which goes beyond the supply in quantity of material
commodities. For how can there be a society really worth serving unless
it is constituted of individuals of significant personal qualities?

The fact is that the opposition of high worth of personality to social
efficiency is a product of a feudally organized society with its rigid
division of inferior and superior. The latter are supposed to have time
and opportunity to develop themselves as human beings; the former are
confined to providing external products. When social efficiency as
measured by product or output is urged as an ideal in a would-be
democratic society, it means that the depreciatory estimate of the
masses characteristic of an aristocratic community is accepted and
carried over. But if democracy has a moral and ideal meaning, it is
that a social return be demanded from all and that o