dergarten
methods.]

Throughout the nineteenth century (indeed throughout
the history of political theory), the pendulum swung between
individualism and complete socialization. Spencer long ago
proclaimed the dominance of the individual; T. H. Green,
following the German philosophers, the dominance of the
state. Like the contrast between egoism and altruism, an
emphasis on either side is bound to be artificial. The
individual can only be a self in a social order; the individual is
only an individual in contrast with others. It is doubtful, for
example, whether a man living all his life alone on a desert
island would discover any individuality at all. A man's
character is displayed in action, and his actions are always,
or nearly always, performed with reference to other people.
And a man's best self-realization cannot be achieved save in
congenial social order. A man will not readily grow into a
saint among a society of sinners, and unless the social order
provides opportunities for the highest type of life, it will exist
only in a very fortunate and favored few. One of the charges
that has been laid against democracy is that it fails to
encourage the highest types of scientific and artistic interests,
that it is the gospel of the mediocre.[1]

[Footnote 1: This is the essence of the aristocratic position,
that a choice life lived by a few is better than a vulgar one
shared by the many.]

It is too often forgotten, on the other hand, by those who
emphasize the importance of society, that society is, after all,
nothing more than an aggregate of selves. The "state," the
"social order" is nothing but the individuals who make it up,
and their relations to each other.

The group exists, after all, even as the most completely
socialized political doctrines insist, for the realization of
individual selves, for freedom of opportunity and initiative. It
is when "individualism" runs rampant, when self-realization
on the part of one individual interferes with self-realization
on the part of all others that individualism becomes a menace.
Individuality is itself valuable, in the first place, because as
Mill pointed out in his essay on _Liberty_ earlier quoted:

What has made the European family an improving instead of a
stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in
them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not the cause; but
their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals,
classe