ption of the
highest goods of Science, Art, and Virtue, social, not anti-social,
motives are the chief stimulus. In the highest forms of consumption,
the practice of the noblest arts of life, the enjoyment of the finest
intellectual and spiritual goods, there is no purely selfish
consumption. For though the highest individuality is then attained,
the enjoyment of one individual requires the enjoyment of others. The
attainment of the highest reaches of knowledge is impossible for the
individual without the constant and increasing aid of other minds and
the inspiring "spirit of the age"; the enjoyment of such knowledge is
in an even wider communication. The practice and enjoyment of the arts
of goodness are necessarily social, because the good life can only be
lived in a good society. Spinoza has summed up the truth in
saying--"The highest good is common to all, and all may equally enjoy
it." So it appears that the highest goods are essentially at once
individual and social, pointing once more the attainment of the higher
synthesis in which the antagonism of the "one" and the "all," which
shows itself in the lower planes of competing effort and enjoyment,
disappears.

Sec. 17. One necessary condition of this progressive life cannot be
ignored. Human life itself must become more qualitative, not only in
its functional activities, but in its physical basis. The greatness
and worth of a community must be seen more clearly to consist not in
the numbers, but in the character of its members. If the number of
individuals in a society continually increases, no reform in methods
of consumption can prevent the constant increase in the proportion of
human energy which must be put into the production of the prime
material necessaries of physical life which are, and in spite of all
improved methods of treating nature will remain, ultimately subject to
a law of diminishing returns: so, less and less energy can be spared
for the life of varied and delicate consumption, high individuality
and intellectual and moral growth. Professor Geddes has well expressed
the importance of this truth: "The remedy lies in higher and higher
individuation--_i.e._, if we would repress excessive multiplication,
we must develop the average individual standard throughout society.
Population not merely tends to out-run the means of subsistence, but
to degenerate below the level of subsistence, so that without steadily
directing more and more of our industry