is the individual that counts, and for good or for ill the individual brought his fate with him at birth. Ensure the production of sound individuals, and you may set at naught the environment. You will, indeed, secure results incomparably better than even the most anxious care expended on environment alone can ever hope to secure.
Such are the respective attitudes of Socialism and Individualism. So far as I can see, they are both absolutely right. Nor is it even clear that they are really opposed; for, as happens in every field, while the affirmations of each are sound, their denials are unsound. Certainly, along each line we may be carried to absurdity.
The Individualism of Max Stirner is not far from the ultimate frontier of sanity, and possibly even on the other side of it; 7 while the Socialism of the Oneida Community involved a self-subordination which it would be idle to expect from the majority of men and women.
But there is a perfect division of labour between Socialism and Individualism. We cannot have too much of either of them. We have only to remember that the field of each is distinct. No one needs Individualism in his water supply, and no one needs Socialism in his religion. All human affairs sort themselves out as coming within the province of Socialism or of Individualism, and each may be pushed to its furthest extreme. 8
It so happens, however, that the capacity of the human brain is limited, and a single brain is not made to hold together the idea of Socialism and the idea of Individualism.
Ordinary people have, it is true, no practical difficulty whatever in acting concurrently in accordance with the ideas of Socialism and of Individualism. But it is different with the men of ideas; they must either be Socialists or Individualists; they cannot be both. The tendency in one or the other direction is probably inborn in these men of ideas.