dangerous, because it is due, not to any candid consideration of the
facts, but to unreasoning popular prejudice and personal
self-justification. The existing system contributes to the increase of
individuality only in case individuality is deprived of all serious
moral and intellectual meaning. In order to sustain their assertion they
must define individuality, not as a living ideal, but as the
psychological condition produced by any individual action. In the light
of such a definition every action performed by an individual would
contribute to individuality; and, conversely, every action performed by
the state, which conceivably could be left to individuals, would
diminish individuality. Such a conception derives from the early
nineteenth century principles of an essential opposition between the
state and the individual; and it is a deduction from the common
conception of democracy as nothing but a finished political organization
in which the popular will prevails. As applied in the traditional
American system this conception of individuality has resulted in the
differentiation of an abundance of raw individual material, but the raw
material has been systematically encouraged to persist only on condition
that it remained undeveloped. Properly speaking, it has not encouraged
individualism at all. Individuality is necessarily based on genuine
discrimination. It has encouraged particularism. While the particles
have been roused into activity, they all remain dominated by
substantially the same forces of attraction and repulsion. But in order
that one of the particles may fulfill the promise of a really separate
existence, he must pursue some special interest of his own. In that way
he begins to realize his individuality, and in realizing his
individuality he is coming to occupy a special niche in the national
structure. A national structure which encourages individuality as
opposed to mere particularity is one which creates innumerable special
niches, adapted to all degrees and kinds of individual development. The
individual becomes a nation in miniature, but devoted to the loyal
realization of a purpose peculiar to himself. The nation becomes an
enlarged individual whose special purpose is that of human amelioration,
and in whose life every individual should find some particular but
essential function.

It surely cannot be seriously claimed that the improvement of the
existing economic organization for the sake of con