each being that goes to make up the whole? And, if that be so, isn't
it the business of the individual to assert his individuality, so as
to make the State that he's going to belong to the kind of State he
would wish it to be? I express myself very awkwardly--"

"Not at all, not at all! In that sense, individualism is no doubt
part of the evolutionary scheme; I quite agree with you. What I
object to is the idea, conveyed in Spencer's title, that the man as
a man can have interests or rights opposed to those of the State as
a State. Your thorough individualist seems to me to lose sight of
the fact that, but for the existing degree of human association, he
simply wouldn't be here at all. He speaks as if he had made himself,
and had the right to dispose of himself; whereas it is society,
civilisation, the State--call it what you will--that has given
him everything he possesses, except his physical organs. Take a
philosopher who prides himself on his detachment from vulgar cares
and desires, duties and troubles, and looks down upon the world with
pity or contempt. Suppose the world--that is to say, his human
kind--revenged itself by refusing to have anything whatever to do
with him, however indirectly; the philosopher would soon find
himself detached with a vengeance. And suppose it possible to go
further than that; suppose the despised world could demand back from
him all it had given, through the course of ages to his ancestors in
him; behold Mr. Philosopher literally up a tree--a naked
anthropoid, with a brain just capable of supplying his stomach
and--perhaps--of saving him from wild beasts."

Lord Dymchurch indulged a quiet mirth.

"You've got hold of a very serviceable weapon," he said, stretching