In fact, one of the strongest
arguments on behalf of a higher and larger conception of state
responsibilities in a democracy is that the candid, courageous, patient,
and intelligent attempt to redeem those responsibilities provides one of
the highest types of individuality--viz. the public-spirited man with a
personal opportunity and a task which should be enormously stimulating
and edifying.
The great weakness of the most popular form of socialism consists,
however, in its mixture of a revolutionary purpose with an international
scope. It seeks the abolition of national distinctions by revolutionary
revolts of the wage-earner against the capitalist; and in so far as it
proposes to undermine the principle of national cohesion and to
substitute for it an international organization of a single class, it is
headed absolutely in the wrong direction. Revolutions may at times be
necessary and on the whole helpful, but not in case there is any other
practicable method of removing grave obstacles to human amelioration;
and in any event their tendency is socially disintegrating.
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