maintain such
conditions of life as are essential to the development of personality.
In its own interests it is bound to foster the growth of character, and
to promote culture and social well-being. In modern times we look to
the State not only to protect life and property, but to secure for each
individual and for all classes of men that basis of material well-being
on which alone life in its truest sense can be built up. The
government must therefore strike some kind of balance between the
extremes of individualism and socialism. While the old theory of
_laissez-faire_, which would permit every man to follow his own
individual bent without regard to the interests of others, has been
generally repudiated, there is still a class of politicians who
ridicule the 'night watchman' idea of the State as Lassalle calls it.
'Let there be as little State as possible,' exclaims Nietzsche.
According to such thinkers the State has only negative functions. The
best government is that which governs least, and allows the utmost
scope to untrammelled individual enterprise. But if there is a
tendency on the part of some to return to the individualistic
principle, the 'paternal' idea as espoused by others is being carried
to the verge of socialism. The function of the State is stretched
almost to breaking point when it is conceived as the 'guardian angel'
who accompanies and guards with perpetual oversight the whole life of
the individual from the cradle to the grave. Many of the more cautious
writers[23] of the day are exposing the dangers which lurk in the
bureaucratic system of government. This tendency is apt to crush
individual enterprise, and cause men to place entire reliance upon
external aid and centralised power. It is indeed difficult to draw a
fast line of demarcation between purely individual and social ends.
There are obviously primary interests belonging to society as a whole
which the State, if it is to be the instrument of the common good,
ought to control; certain {233} activities which, if permitted as
monopolies, become a menace to the community, and which can be
satisfactorily conducted only as departments of the State. National
life is a unity, and it can only maintain its integrity as it secures
for all its constituents, justice, equity before the law, and freedom
of each to be himself. The State ought to protect those who in the
competitive struggle of the modern industrial system find themselves at
a