ee development which idealistic individualism desired.

The development of the industrial revolution, however, soon made
economic optimism impossible, and with its decay idealistic and
scientific individualism parted company. The former retained its concern
for individual liberty but came to see that its ideal was as much
threatened by economic dependence as by state control, that the choice
for most members of society was not one between state interference and
no interference at all, but between the state controlling or not
controlling the power of interference possessed by the economically
superior members of society. On such principles Henry Sidgwick
justified an extensive system of state control of industry, and for such
reason the strongest supporters of the rights of the individual have
been found among Socialists.

Scientific individualism, which found its unit in the economic man and
sought to absorb in economics both ethics and politics, was not in
essence affected by the discrediting of economic optimism. It painted
the struggle between individuals in gloomy instead of in attractive
colours, its 'scientific' prepossessions inclined it to a determinism
which led easily to the economic theory of history and even, by a
curious conversion of opposites, to the 'scientific socialism' of Karl
Marx. In its essence it is a denial of the real existence of politics.
For it is a theory of society which denies the possibility of a will for
the common good and therefore the possibility of political ideals.

It was this powerful and malignant theory which was attacked and
answered by the modern idealist school represented by Green, Wallace,
and Ritchie, and, in the present day, by Dr. Bosanquet. These writers
gave us a theory of the state based on the importance and reality of
social purpose. They went back to the theory of the Greek city state
expounded by Plato and Aristotle, finding modern reinforcement in the
teaching of Rousseau and more especially of Hegel. Their destructive
criticism of 'scientific' individualism was reinforced by the teaching
of anthropology and of historical jurisprudence, which emphasized the
part played in early forms of society by social solidarity and showed
the inability of individualism to account for the development of
society. Their destructive criticism was, however, the least part of
their achievement. They exhibited convincingly the state as the product
of will and purpose, based on man