Note 953 — Chapter II · : STATE SOCIALISM

“No means has as yet been suggested which will help to delimit the functions of the State from those of the individual. But that is not a consideration of any great moment, for we can always arrange matters so as to make them balance roughly when it comes to a particular case.” (L’Individu et l’État, pp. 298 and 301.) Elsewhere (in his preface to Mill’s Liberty) he gives it as his opinion that such a delimitation is impossible, and that when we are speaking of the State and the individual we are speaking of two distinct powers, such as life and law (p. vii). Law has to follow in the footsteps of life, reproving its excesses and correcting its faults (p. xiii).