have done it?" The answer, which is
mainly contained in or drawn from what has gone before is--No; and the
direct reason is, because, in the conditions produced by the position
described, nothing but what is good remains in the human nature. The
bed-rock has been reached, and it is good; the causes of evil and of
its continuance are removed.

Ever since man has led a corporate life it seems probable that one
outstanding evil has prevailed, in greater or less degrees according to
the rate and amount of progress made by any community. And this evil
is the lack and suppression of individuality. It seems impossible to
account for it, except by simply saying that it is, and has always been
a characteristic tendency of human nature; however, this is the most
encouraging answer possible, because it assumes that this evil can
eventually be eradicated. No one can surely deny that there is a lack
of individuality at present; its chief manifestations, of course, are
to be found in hatred, and in the spirit of competition and rivalry; it
produces a clash between individual opinions and actions which is so
apparent that it cannot be denied, and need not be enlarged upon. But,
apart from these more obvious manifestations, this failing has been
responsible for the production and continuance of _all_ that is evil in
man. Human nature is the foundation of our life, of that foundation
every individual is entitled to partake; and, furthermore, that
foundation is good. Every individual possesses a portion of this
foundation as his right; and what is the result, under these
circumstances, of lack of individuality? Surely the result is that
some parts of those individual sections, parts which are in some cases
similar to and in other cases different from parts of other individual
sections, are used as the foundation, while the remainder is left
unused. For, for the most part, men either employ those parts of their
portion of the foundation of goodness which are common to as many other
individual sections as possible, or, like Alceste, the parts which are
definitely opposed to most others. In any case where the foundation is
undeveloped and unused there grows, like a poisonous growth, sin, which
is made of and feeds upon the material of the good foundation, which
has been put to the wrong use. Sin and evil are not separate, in the
strict sense, from good. It seems inconceivable that good and evil
should have had different origin