own life, to follow their bent, even in the face of
tremendous difficulties, and perhaps because of those difficulties, in
the more fortunate cases, to realize, at whatever cost of suffering,
great works and great lives. But under the system sketched by Allison
I have the gravest doubts whether any man of genius would ever emerge.
The very fact that everybody's career will be regulated for him, and
his difficulties smoothed away, that, in a word, the open road will
imply the beaten track, will, I fear, diminish, if not destroy, the
enterprise, the innate spirit of adventure, in the spiritual as in the
physical world, on which depends all that we call, or ought to call,
progress. A collectivist state, it is true, might establish and endow
academies; but would it ever produce a Shakespeare or a Michelangelo?
It might engender and foster religious orthodoxy; but would it have a
place for the reformer or the saint? Should we not have to pay for the
general level of comfort and intelligence, by suppressing the only
thing good in itself, the manifestation of genius? I do not say
dogmatically that it would be so: I do not even say dogmatically that,
even if it were, the argument would be conclusive against the
collectivist state. But the issue is so tremendous that it necessarily
makes me pause, as it must, I contend, any candid man, who is not
prejudiced by a preconceived ideal.

"Now, it is not for the sake of recommending any opinion of my own that
I have dwelt on these considerations. It is, rather, to illustrate and
drive home the point with which I began, that the intellect has its
rights, that it enters into every creed, and that it undermines, in
every creed, all elements of mere irrational or anti-rational faith;
that this fact can only be disguised by a conscious or unconscious
predetermination, not to let the intellect have its say; and that such
predetermination is a very serious error and vice. It is without shame
and without regret, on the contrary it is with satisfaction and
self-approval, that I find in my own case, my intelligence daily more
and more undermining my instinctive beliefs. If, as some have held, it
were necessary to choose between reason and passion, I would choose
reason. But I find no such necessity; for reason to me herself is a
passion. Men think the life of reason cold. How little do they know
what it is to be responsive to every call, solicited by every impulse,
yet still, like t