Abstract and absolute doctrines of right,when imported from France,fell flat upon the average Englishman.He was eager enough to discuss the utility of this or that part of the machinery,but without inquiring into first principles of mechanism.The argument from 'utility'deals with concrete facts,and presupposes an acceptance of some common criterion of the useful.The constant discussion of political matters in parliament and the press implied a tacit acceptance on all hands of constitutional methods.Practical men,asking whether this or that policy shall be adopted in view of actual events,no more want to go back to right reason and 'laws of nature'than a surveyor to investigate the nature of geometrical demonstration.Very important questions were raised as to the rights of the press,for example,or the system of representation.But everybody agreed that the representative system and freedom of speech were good things;and argued the immediate questions of fact.The order,only established by experience and tradition,was accepted,subject to criticism of detail,and men turned impatiently from abstract argument,and left the inquiry into 'social contracts'to philosophers,that is,to silly people in libraries.Politics were properly a matter of business,to be discussed in a business-like spirit.In this sense,'individualism'is congenial to 'empiricism,'because it starts from facts and particular interests,and resents the intrusion of first principles.The characteristic individualism,again,suggests one other remark.Individual energy and sense of responsibility are good as even extreme socialists may admit --if they do not exclude a sense of duties to others.It may be a question how far the stimulation of individual enterprise and the vigorous spirit of industrial competition really led to a disregard of the interests of the weaker.But it would be a complete misunderstanding of the time if we inferred that it meant a decline of humane feeling.Undoubtedly great evils had grown up,and some continued to grow which were tolerated by the indifference,or even stimulated by the selfish aims,of the dominant classes.But,in the first place,many of the most active prophets of the individualist spirit were acting,and acting sincerely,in the name of humanity.They were attacking a system which they held,and to a great extent,I believe,held rightly,to be especially injurious to the weakest classes.Possibly they expected too much from the simple removal of restrictions;but certainly they denounced the restrictions as unjust to all,not simply as hindrances to the wealth of the rich.Adam Smith's position is intelligible:it was,he thought,a proof of a providential order that each man,by helping himself,unintentionally helped his neighbours.
The moral sense based upon sympathy was therefore not opposed to,but justified,the economic principles that each man should first attend to his own interest.
The unintentional co-operation would thus become conscious and compatible with the established order.And,in the next place,so far from there being a want of humane feeling,the most marked characteristic of the eighteenth century was precisely the growth of humanity.In the next generation,the eighteenth century came to be denounced as cold,heartless,faithless,and so forth.The established mode of writing history is partly responsible for this perversion.Men speak as though some great man,who first called attention to an evil,was a supernatural being who had suddenly dropped into the world from another sphere.His condemnation of evil is therefore taken to be a proof that the time must be evil.Any century is bad if we assume all the good men to he exceptions.But the great man is really also the product of his time.He is the mouthpiece of its prevailing sentiments,and only the first to see clearly what many are beginning to perceive obscurely.The emergence of the prophet is a proof of the growing demand of his hearers for sound teaching.Because he is in advance of men generally,he sees existing abuses more clearly,and we take his evidence against his contemporaries as conclusive.