THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
marks of it is that it is chiefly effective in promoting socialism. The extreme individualist stands in practice and theory by the rights of property in the most exclusive sense. But the effect of this on the general public is merely to undermine the respect for property, on which all the so-called rights must ultimately rest, and so to play into the hands of the socialist. And the same is true in another way of extreme socialism. What is more common than to see ardent socialists advocating as a cure for starvation-wages communistic palliatives, which, if widely applied, could only have the effect of weakening the general movement in the direction of better pay, and so playing into the hands of the individualist ?
This paper will not have been addressed to an English audi- ence if it has not suggested to some, as a final objection to the contention it urges, that it is after all the merest common- place. "You are only elaborating with a great deal of unneces- sary flourish the truism that we must look at both sides of the shield, and consider all questions that come before us from every available point of view. In life and politics, especially, we have to remember that we have to do with all sorts and con- ditions of men, and with all varieties of taste. We must be prepared, then, for a little of everything a little realism and a little idealism, a little socialism and a little individualism, a touch of optimism to give dignity and a touch of pessimism and of the devil to give a relish to our opinions. We are to go a certain way with the advocates of all these doctrines, but ' not too far." 1 Well, perhaps I do mean partly this, but I mean a good deal more. For it is possible to look at both sides of the shield without seeing them both as sides of the same shield, and it is possible to see many aspects of a question and to see how people might differ upon it without seeing how the differ- ent aspects complement one another in the whole that is broken up between them. It is this comprehensive view for which I have been putting in a plea. In this view we not only see the various sides, we unite them. In order to do so we must not merely go round and round, we must take our stand at the center. And
