Principles of western civilisation

I THE POSITION IN MODERN THOUGHT 79

Nothing can be more remarkable than the absolute unconsciousness displayed by Mill of the profound difference—affecting, as we now see, every principle of social science—which exists between the “‘ State,” considered as a piece of social mechanism directed to further the utilitarian ends of its existing members, and “Society” considered as a living organism, and undergoing, under the influence of Natural Selection, a vast process of slow development in which all the interests of the existing individuals are lost sight of in wider issues. A discussion like that in book iv. of the Prenczples of Political Economy—in which Mill objects to the trampling, crushing, and elbowing of the modern industrial world because of their unpleasantness to the individual ; in which the stationary social state! is regarded as desirable and normal; in which the limitation of population by prudential restraints, dictated by the ‘enlightened selfishness” of the individual, is set up as a social ideal—already belongs simply to the literature of a pre-scientific epoch, when men possessed as yet no real insight into the character of the natural forces at work in the evolution of society.

Remarkable in every particular must appear to the mind of the evolutionist the position which has just been described. Yet we cannot fully understand how completely the tendencies of Western thought have been controlled down into the period in which we are living, by the conceptions from which it arose, until we proceed farther to extend our view and carry it beyond the circle of ideas which the school of English utilitarians as a whole represents.

1 Principles of Political Economy, by J. S. Mill, vi., iv.