difference. So long as we ignore difference, so long as we ignore
individuality, and that I hold has been the common sin of all
Utopias hitherto, we can make absolute statements, prescribe
communisms or individualisms, and all sorts of hard theoretic
arrangements. But in the world of reality, which--to modernise
Heraclitus and Empedocles--is nothing more nor less than the world
of individuality, there are no absolute rights and wrongs, there are
no qualitative questions at all, but only quantitative adjustments.
Equally strong in the normal civilised man is the desire for freedom
of movement and the desire for a certain privacy, for a corner
definitely his, and we have to consider where the line of
reconciliation comes.

The desire for absolute personal privacy is perhaps never a very
strong or persistent craving. In the great majority of human beings,
the gregarious instinct is sufficiently powerful to render any but
the most temporary isolations not simply disagreeable, but painful.
The savage has all the privacy he needs within the compass of his
skull; like dogs and timid women, he prefers ill-treatment to
desertion, and it is only a scarce and complex modern type that
finds comfort and refreshment in quite lonely places and quite
solitary occupations. Yet such there are, men who can neither sleep
well nor think well, nor attain to a full perception of beautiful
objects, who do not savour the best of existence until they are
securely alone, and for the sake of these even it would be
reasonable to draw some limits to the general right of free
movement. But their particular need is only a special and
exceptional aspect of an almost universal claim to privacy among
modern people, not so much for the sake of isolation as for
congenial companionship. We want to go apart from the great crowd,