racted and conflicting
forces. The difficulties are obvious enough, nor need I dwell upon them
here. I will not inquire whether it does not suppose something like
omniscience in the new industrial leaders; and whether the restless and
multifarious energy now displayed in discovering new means of
satisfying human wants could be supplied by a central body, or a number
of central bodies, made up of human beings, and, moreover, official
human beings, reluctant to try experiments and strike into new courses,
and without the present motives for enterprise, "Individualists" have
enlarged sufficiently upon such topics. What I have to note is that, in
any case, the change supposes the necessity of a corresponding morality
in the growth of the instincts, the public spirit, the hatred of
indolence, the temperance and self-command which would be requisite to
work it efficiently. The organisation into which we are born
presupposes certain moral instincts, and, moreover, necessarily implies
a vast system of moral discipline. Our hopes and aspirations, our
judgments of our neighbours and of ourselves, are at every moment
guided and moulded by the great structure of which we form a part.
Whenever we ask how our lives are to be directed, what are to be the
terms on which we form our most intimate ties, whom we are to support
or suppress, how we are to win respect or incur contempt, we are
profoundly affected by the social relations in which we are placed at
our birth, and the corresponding beliefs or prejudices which we have
unconsciously imbibed. Such influences, it may perhaps be said, are of
incomparably greater importance than the direct exhortations to which
we listen, or than the abstract doctrines which we accept in words, but
which receive their whole colouring from the concrete facts to which
they conform. Now, I ask how such discipline can be conceived without
some kind of competition; or, rather, what would be the discipline
which would remain if, in some sense, competition could be suppressed?
If in the ideal society there are still prizes to be won, positions
which may be the object of legitimate desire, and if those positions
are to be open to every one, whatever his circumstances, we might still
have the keenest competition, though carried on by different methods.
If, on the other hand, no man's position were to be better than
another's, we might suppress competition at the price of suppressing
every motive for social as w