In the foregoing chapter I have said that while absorption in the idea of democracy has had a tendency to impair devotion to the idea of liberty, yet that in democracy itself there is no inherent opposition to liberty.  The danger to individual liberty in a democracy is of the same nature as the danger to individual liberty in a monarchy or an oligarchy; whether power be held by one man, or by a thousand, or by a majority out of a hundred million, it is equally possible for the governing power on the one hand to respect, or on the other hand to ignore, the right of individuals to the free play of their individual powers, the exercise of their individual predilections, the leading of their individual lives according to their own notions of what is right or desirable.  A monarch of enlightened and liberal mind will respect that right, and limit his encroachments upon it to the minimum required for the essential objects of reasonable government; so, too, will a democracy if it is of like temper and intelligence.  But it is not so with Socialism.  Numerous as are the varieties of Socialism, they all agree in being inherently antagonistic to individualism.  It may be pleaded, in criticism of this assertion, that all government is opposed to individualism; that the difference in this respect between Socialism and other forms of civil organization is only one of degree; that we make a surrender of individuality, as well as of liberty, when we consent to live in any organized form of society.  It is not worth while to dispute the point; the difference may, if one chooses, be regarded as only a difference of degree.  But when a difference of degree goes to such a point that what is minor, incidental, exceptional in the one case, is paramount, essential, pervasive in the other, the difference is, for all the purposes of thinking, equivalent to a difference of kind.  Socialism is in its very essence opposed to individualism.  It makes the collective welfare not an incidental concern of each man’s daily life, but his primary concern.  The standard it sets up, the regulations it establishes, are not things that a man must merely take account of as special restraints on his freedom, exceptional limitations on the exercise of his individuality; they constitute the basic conditions of his life.  When the Socialist movement was in its infancy in this country—­though it had made great headway in several of the leading countries of Europe—­the customary way of disposing of it was with a mere wave of the hand.  Socialism can never work; it is contrary to human nature—­these simple assertions were regarded by nearly all conservatives as sufficient to settle the matter in the minds of all sensible persons That is now no longer so much the fashion; yet I have no doubt that a very large proportion of those who are opposed to Socialism are still content with this way of disposing of it.  But Socialism has steadily—­though of course with fluctuations —­increased in strength, in America as well