was active and alert to its economic problems could not escape the achievement of greatness.  All that is true; but it evades the obvious conditions we have inherited.  For even when the psychological inadequacies of Smith’s attitude are put aside, we can judge his theory in the light of the experience it summarizes.  Once it is admitted that the object of the State is the achievement of the good life, the final canon of politics is bound to be a moral one.  We have to inquire into the dominant conception of the good life, the number of those upon whom it is intended that good shall be conferred.

In the light of this conception it is obvious enough that Smith’s view is impossible.  No mere conflict of private interests, however pure in motive, seems able to achieve a harmony of interest between the members of the State.  Liberty, in the sense of a positive and equal opportunity for self-realization, is impossible save upon the basis of the acceptance of certain minimal standards which can get accepted only through collective effort.  Smith did not see that in the processes of politics what gets accepted is not the will that is at every moment a part of the state-purpose, but the will of those who in fact operate the machinery of government.  In the half-century after he wrote the men who dominated political life were, with the best intentions, moved by motives at most points unrelated to the national well-being.  The fellow-servant doctrine would never have obtained acceptance in a state where, as he thought, employer and workman stood upon an equal footing.  Opposition to the Factory Acts would never have developed in a community where it was realized that below certain standards of subsistence the very concept of humanity is impossible.  Modern achievement implies a training in the tools of life; and that, for most, is denied even in our own day to the vast majority of men.  In the absence of legislation, it is certain that those who employ the services of men will be their political masters; and it will follow that their Acts of Parliament will be adapted to the needs of property.  That shrinkage of the purpose of the State will mean for most not merely hardship but degradation of all that makes life worthy.  Upon those stunted existences, indeed, a wealthy civilization may easily be builded.  Yet it will be a civilization of slaves rather than of men.

The individualism, that is to say, for which Adam Smith was zealous demands a different institutional expression from that which he gave it.  We must not assume an a priori justification for the forces of the past.  The customs of men may represent the thwarting of the impulses of the many at the expense of the few not less easily than they may embody a general desire; and it is surely a mistaken usage to dignify as natural whatever may happen to have occurred.  A man may find self-realization not less in working for the common good than in the limited satisfaction