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300 The Ideal of Human Unityorganised stagnancy such as overtook the Graeco-Roman worldafter the establishment of the Roman Empire.The call of the State to the individual to immolate himselfon its altar and to give up his free activities into an organisedcollective activity is therefore something quite different from thedemand of our highest ideals. It amounts to the giving up ofthe present form of individual egoism into another, a collectiveform, larger but not superior, rather in many ways inferior tothe best individual egoism. The altruistic ideal, the discipline ofself-sacrifice, the need of a growing solidarity with our fellowsand a growing collective soul in humanity are not in dispute. Butthe loss of self in the State is not the thing that these high idealsmean, nor is it the way to their fulfilment. Man must learn notto suppress and mutilate but to fulfil himself in the fulfilment ofmankind, even as he must learn not to mutilate or destroy butto complete his ego by expanding it out of its limitations andlosing it in something greater which it now tries to represent.But the deglutition of the free individual by a huge State machineis quite another consummation. The State is a convenience, anda rather clumsy convenience, for our common development; itought never to be made an end in itself.The second claim of the State idea that this supremacy anduniversal activity of the organised State machine is the bestmeans of human progress, is also an exaggeration and a fiction.Man lives by the community; he needs it to develop himself individuallyas well as collectively. But is it true that a State-governedaction is the most capable of developing the individual perfectlyas well as of serving the common ends of the community? Itis not true. What is true is that it is capable of providing thecooperative action of the individuals in the community withall necessary conveniences and of removing from it disabilitiesand obstacles which would otherwise interfere with its working.Here the real utility of the State ceases. The non-recognitionof the possibilities of human cooperation was the weakness ofEnglish individualism; the turning of a utility for cooperative actioninto an excuse for rigid control by the State is the weaknessof the Teutonic idea of collectivism. When the State attempts to