Social reformers,
like those scientists of a bygone era who were sweeping the skies
with their telescopes, have likewise been seeking far and wide for
the solution of our social problems in remote and wholesale panaceas,
whereas the true solution is close at hand,--in the human individual.
Buried within each human being lies concealed a vast store of energy,
which awaits release, expression and sublimation. The individual may
profitably be considered as the "atom" of society. And the solution of
the problems of society and of civilization will be brought about when
we release the energies now latent and undeveloped in the individual.
Professor Edwin Grant Conklin expresses the problem in another form;
though his analogy, it seems to me, is open to serious criticism. "The
freedom of the individual man," he writes,(1) "is to that of society as
the freedom of the single cell is to that of the human being. It is this
large freedom of society, rather than the freedom of the individual,
which democracy offers to the world, free societies, free states, free
nations rather than absolutely free individuals. In all organisms and in
all social organizations, the freedom of the minor units must be limited
in order that the larger unit may achieve a new and greater freedom, and
in social evolution the freedom of individuals must be merged more and
more into the larger freedom of society."
This analogy does not bear analysis. Restraint and constraint of
individual expression, suppression of individual freedom "for the good
of society" has been practised from time immemorial; and its failure
is all too evident.
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