o the same extent. Some have
more courage, more ability, more insight, and more training than others;
and an efficient organization can accomplish more than can a mere
collection of individuals, precisely because it may represent a standard
of performance far above that of the average individual. Its merit is
simply that of putting the collective power of the group at the service
of its ablest members; and the ablest members of the group will never
attain to an individual responsibility commensurate with their powers,
until they are enabled to work efficiently towards the redemption of the
collective responsibility. The nation gives individuality an increased
scope and meaning by offering individuals a chance for effective
service, such as they could never attain under a system of collective
irresponsibility. Thus under a system of collective responsibility the
process of social improvement is absolutely identified with that of
individual improvement. The antithesis is not between nationalism and
individualism, but between an individualism which is indiscriminate, and
an individualism which is selective.

II

CONDITIONS OF INDIVIDUAL EMANCIPATION

It is, then, essential to recognize that the individual American will
never obtain a sufficiently complete chance of self-expression, until
the American nation has earnestly undertaken and measurably achieved the
realization of its collective purpose. As we shall see presently, the
cure for this individual sterility lies partly with the individual
himself or rather with the man who proposes to become an individual; and
under any plan of economic or social organization, the man who proposes
to become an individual is a condition of national as well as individual
improvement. It is none the less true that any success in the
achievement of the national purpose will contribute positively to the
liberation of the individual, both by diminishing his temptations,
improving his opportunities, and by enveloping him in an invigorating
rather than an enervating moral and intellectual atmosphere.

It is the economic individualism of our existing national system which
inflicts the most serious damage on American individuality; and American
individual achievement in politics and science and the arts will remain
partially impoverished as long as our fellow-countrymen neglect or
refuse systematically to regulate the distribution of wealth in the
national interest. I am aware, of course,