and the State was the only proper initiator of further development.  By the end of the last century the kings on the Continent, the Parliament in these isles, and the revolutionary Convention in France, although they were at war with each other, agreed in asserting that no separate unions between citizens must exist within the State; that hard labour and death were the only suitable punishments to workers who dared to enter into “coalitions.”  “No state within the State!” The State alone, and the State’s Church, must take care of matters of general interest, while the subjects must represent loose aggregations of individuals, connected by no particular bonds, bound to appeal to the Government each time that they feel a common need.  Up to the middle of this century this was the theory and practice in Europe.  Even commercial and industrial societies were looked at with suspicion.  As to the workers, their unions were treated as unlawful almost within our own lifetime in this country and within the last twenty years on the Continent.  The whole system of our State education was such that up to the present time, even in this country, a notable portion of society would treat as a revolutionary measure the concession of such rights as every one, freeman or serf, exercised five hundred years ago in the village folkmote, the guild, the parish, and the city.

The absorption of all social functions by the State necessarily favoured the development of an unbridled, narrow-minded individualism.  In proportion as the obligations towards the State grew in numbers the citizens were evidently relieved from their obligations towards each other.  In the guild—­and in medieval times every man belonged to some guild or fraternity two “brothers” were bound to watch in turns a brother who had fallen ill; it would be sufficient now to give one’s neighbour the address of the next paupers’ hospital.  In barbarian society, to assist at a fight between two men, arisen from a quarrel, and not to prevent it from taking a fatal issue, meant to be oneself treated as a murderer; but under the theory of the all-protecting State the bystander need not intrude:  it is the policeman’s business to interfere, or not.  And while in a savage land, among the Hottentots, it would be scandalous to eat without having loudly called out thrice whether there is not somebody wanting to share the food, all that a respectable citizen has to do now is to pay the poor tax and to let the starving starve.  The result is, that the theory which maintains that men can, and must, seek their own happiness in a disregard of other people’s wants is now triumphant all round in law, in science, in religion.  It is the religion of the day, and to doubt of its efficacy is to be a dangerous Utopian.  Science loudly proclaims that the struggle of each against all is the leading principle of nature, and of human societies as well.  To that struggle Biology ascribes the progressive evolution of the animal world.  History takes the same line of