GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

CRITICISM OF IDEALIST THEORY 75!
these individuals may be, and usually arc, other than and
hostile to those who hold political power.
As a result^ the citizens of democracies axe diminishingly
prepared to accept authority in matters of morals and
religion, unless it is self-chosen. The reason why Utopias,
for example, produce such feelings of repulsion in the
modern mind is that the average reader does not happen
to want to live the kind of life which their authors advertise
as the best. "Mankind/* to quote again one of Mill's basic
principles of liberty, to which most of us in theory sub-
scribe, "are greater gainers by suffering each other to live
as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to
live as seems good to the rest."
RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL INDIVIDUALISM. As a
result of the liberal postulates which, owing in part to
the influence of Mill, dominated the outlook of the Western
democracies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
men and women have grown accustomed to take religious
and ethical freedom for granted. The directions in which
a man will find ethical and spiritual satisfaction are, they
hold, his own concern, nor can we avoid remarking
that, as a matter of historical fact, the ordinary citizen
has, in England at least, during the last hundred years,
found Himif^Uhjng satisfaction for his ethical needs in the
State-controlled church of the political organization to
which he belongs. Increasingly he has tended to form
independent associations for the purpose of satisfying his
spiritual needs. The significance of these associations,
more particularly in relation to the ethical pretensions
of the idealist theory of the State, lies in their claim
to set a higher standard of morality than that with which
the State is satisfied. People are heard to complain that
politics is, on the whole, "a dirty game" into which they
do not wish to enter, a game which observes in public life
a lower standard of conduct than that which they maintain
in private. They point out that a mere outward observance
of the laws of the State does riot demand a high degree of