Individualism

Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament

INDIVIDUALISM. —The word individualism is used in two senses, and the difference of meaning is constantly employed in order to discredit one set of ideas by arguing against the other. In a general way the uses may be distinguished by calling the one philosophical and the other political. Individualism, in the philosophical sense, attempts to derive everything from the intellect and the interests of the individual. However much a man derives from others, he ultimately depends, it argues, on his own judgment and his five senses; and, however benevolent he may be, all his motives have their source in self-love. Descartes started to reconstruct our whole knowledge from the individual’s knowledge of himself, and his successors naturally sought to construct our whole activity from the individual’s love to himself. Shaftesbury and Butler had to affirm almost as a discovery that benevolence is as true and real a part of human nature as self-love. Only after Hume had reduced this kind of individualism to sensationalism, leaving the individual himself a mere series of sensations, and after Spinozism began to be poured into the waters of speculation, was it seen that man could not be understood alone, but only in his whole context.

It is needless to prove that this kind of individualism is not maintained by the Scriptures. And still less is it necessary to show that it is not our Lord’s reading of human nature. The creature that is made in the image of God is not made for himself. The creed that says, ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself’ ( Matthew 16:24), believes that it finds something more in man than even the wisest self-love to which it can appeal. The individual does not, it is true, lose in Christ’s service. On the contrary, he will receive an hundredfold, and, over and above, life everlasting ( Matthew 19:29). But that is only after he has learned the secret of forsaking all, after he has been taught, not of his own self-interest, but after he has been drawn by the Father from all self-regard ( John 6:44). This possibility in man, our Lord recognizes, was also taught by the prophets, who wrote, ‘And they shall all be taught of God’ ( John 6:45). To be taught of God means to be saved from this kind of individualism, to discover that it is not our right position and not our true selves, but is alienation from our true life and our true home; it is to learn that not only is love part of our nature, but that we have never found ourselves at all till it takes us out of ourselves ( Luke 17:33,  Matthew 10:39).

Philosophical Individualism, however, is not only perfectly consistent with the appeal to authority which the other kind of individualism rejects, but it is almost entirely dependent upon such an authority for any explanation of the social order. On the other hand, what we have called Political Individualism is frequently maintained precisely on the ground that man is not, in the sense of belonging only to himself, individualistic, but has his true social quality within himself. ‘Individualism’ in this other sense means the rights of the individual over against authority, a position which does not, as is usually assumed, involve logically the other individualism, the individualism of every man for himself. It is not a denial of the necessity of a corporate existence or of the value of society. Its real opposite is Communism, and the real point at issue is whether society depends on the individual or the individual on society. Both Individualism and Communism, of course, would admit a mutual inter-relation, but the question is which is first, the individual or the social institution, and which is to be our chief reliance, the goodwill of the individual or the control of the social machinery. So far is this kind of individualism from involving individualism in the other sense, that it rather assumes that all the elements for the highest social state exist in each man, and would come to fruition, if only the external hindrances could be removed. On this latter question, it must be admitted, our Lord’s attitude is much more difficult to determine.

Of this practical individualism there are several types. First, there is the individualism of Nietzsche, to whom every altruistic feeling is the mere unreasoning instinct of the herd. That kind of individualism stood at the foot of the Cross, and said, ‘He saved others, himself he cannot save,’ and saw in the position the height of absurdity. Then there is the vigorous Philistine individualism of Herbert Spencer. It conceives man as a creature with five senses and ten fingers, who needs nothing on earth but a free field and no favour, whose chief duty to the human race is to secure its progress by making the weakest go to the wall. The text it most firmly believes in, in the whole Bible, is, ‘He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand’; and what it cannot away with in Jesus is that He told people to give to everyone who asked, and to sell all, and give to the poor,—a frightful encouragement to laziness and mendicancy, and a most hurtful interference with the law of the survival of the fittest. Again, there is the individualism of Mr. Auberon Herbert and the Free Life . In its eyes men are quite free to part with everything they have, and it is believed they would part with it for the best purposes, if it were not that they are robbed and also debased by being blackmailed under the name of taxes. ‘Bumble’ is the true name and nature of all authorities, it having been their way in all time to muddle everything, doing it wastefully and doing it badly. Freedom, on the other hand, is man’s highest privilege, and would, if it could get a chance, be his surest guidance. Force, which is the sole instrument of the State, has only one right application. It has a right to resist force, to suppress violence. The State is, when it keeps to its own sphere, simply the big policeman, ‘a terror to evil-doers,’ and also, in so far as it kindly lets them alone, ‘a praise to them that do well.’ With less hesitation regarding consequences, this individualism reasserts J. S. Mill’s principle, ‘that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.’ Finally, there is the individualism of Count Tolstoi, the basis of which he flods in the Gospels themselves. ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged,’ applies as much to a man in his official capacity as in his private, and ‘Resist not evil’ is required from the community as much as from the individual. No man is ever so much wiser and better than his fellows that he can have the right in any capacity to take over the regulation of their lives, and the very goal of history is to teach the folly and wickedness of any body of men trying to bear rule over others,—a philosophy of history somewhat akin to St. Paul’s conception of the dispensation of the Law as meant to shut all up unto disobedience ( Romans 11:32).

The kindliness of the Socialists towards Tolstoi seems at first sight inexplicable, for nothing could be more opposed to their method than this rejection of all visible authorities. The Socialist, moreover, has the same sympathy with Christ’s teaching. Take, e.g. , Headlam’s Fabian Tract , No. 42. The teaching of Jesus, he affirms, had hardly anything to do with a life after death, but a great deal to do with a Kingdom of God, which is a righteous society to be established upon earth. Christ’s works were secular, socialistic works. Whatever may be said of His miracles of raising the dead, they show that the death of a young person was a monstrous, disorderly thing to Him. If men would live in a rational, organized, orderly brotherhood, they would be clothed as beautifully as the lily. His denunciations were for those who oppressed the poor; and the man whom He spoke of as in hell, was the man who calmly accepted the difference between the rich and the poor; while the persons who were on the right hand at the Judgment, were those who had taken pains to know that people were properly clothed and fed. The Christian society was meant to do on a large seals the social work which Jesus had done on a small. Jesus ordained Baptism to receive every human child as equal into His Church, and the Eucharist to be a sacrament of equal brotherhood; and He made the first word in His prayer the recognition of a common Father, which must involve the equality of brethren. The Song of Mary describes Him as putting down the mighty from their seats and sending the rich empty away, and His Apostles insist on every man labouring, and on the labourer, not the capitalist, being first partaker of the fruits. If, therefore, ‘you want to be a good Christian; you must be something very much like a good Socialist.’ The Church, we are told, is fettered, and ineffective for carrying out this task, but much ‘may be done by those Churchmen who remember that the State is a sacred organization as well as the Church,’ and who are willing to help to seize it for the good of the people. Their first task, strangely, will be to free the Church from the fetters of the State, for one would rather have imagined that the logical conclusion should have been Rothe’s position, that it is the business of the Church so to labour that ultimately it may be absorbed in the Christian State.

This exposition clearly shows the reason for sympathy with Tolstoi. It is a case of extremes meeting. Extreme individualism and extreme Socialism are both alike conscious of the present distress. Individualism is as little satisfied as Socialism with twelve millionaires dining at one end of London and finding the cultivated globe too small to please their palates, and at the other a million and a half of their fellow-creatures not knowing whether they will have any dinner at all. Than this, both are a great deal nearer the position of Him who said, ‘Sell that ye have, and give alms’ ( Luke 12:33), ‘woe unto you who are rich’ ( Luke 6:24), who denounced the robbery of the widow and the orphan, and no doubt included every form of ruthless competition whereby the strong get advantage of the weak. Competition has become a sacred word in these days, but it never has been a Christian word, and if some higher law does not rule above it, the fittest that will survive by it will not be the best but only the most rapacious.

Extreme Socialism and extreme Individualism, moreover, have this in common, that both carry on their propaganda in the interests of the individual and in the hope of arriving at a better state of society. The Individualist thinks a better society can be formed only out of better individuals, and regards force as the great obstacle; whereas the Socialist thinks the individual will never have a chance in the present kind of social conditions. That Christ aimed both at creating a better individual and a better society needs no proof, and it must further be recognized that the society He Himself created, considered a voluntary community of goods at least in agreement with the spirit of His teaching (see art. Wealth). The emphasis which the leaders put on this voluntary aspect of communism distinguishes Christianity clearly from Socialism, but still the experiment indicates that, in a more Christian society, the Socialist ideal might be accomplished in another way. With our present concentration on material well-being, the end of competition would be almost the end of individuality; but if our real life were less lived by bread alone, if our true individuality were dependent on higher concerns, we might come to cultivate together the soil of the earth and enjoy together all it produces as much in common as we use the air that moves on its surface and the water that comes down its hills, and we should then be enabled to accept many of Christ’s commands as literal which we can only now live with as figures of speech.

One feels in reading the Gospels that what is more alien to them than either Individualism or Socialism, is the current amalgam of both, which defends all the Individualism that means personal profit and all the Socialism that means personal security and dignity, which finds all our Lord’s concessions literal and all His demands figurative. The typical attitude, though not usually expressed so bluntly, is Loisy’s. Christ, he says, conceived the Kingdom of God, which He thought was at hand, as the great social panacea. Though He enforced it with the enthusiasm and excess which are necessary to implant any great ideal, it was quite unworkable in this rough world. There rose up in place of it, therefore, the Church with its authorities for belief and for conduct, that useful, practical, enduring compromise between the individual and the religious society. It is this combination which most of our countrymen who love compromise as the oil, if not the water, of life, are concerned to maintain; and when they welcome the passing of Individualism, they mean to hail the revival of the power of the visible authorities; and when they object to Socialism, they only mean that they do not approve of the purposes for which the power is to be used.

The method of Socialism, nevertheless, is not the method of the gospel, and the usual course of the Socialist is that which Mr. Headlam follows,—to prove that the aims of Socialism are Christ’s, and then take for granted that He would approve of the means proposed for attaining them. Even supposing we make the large concession of granting the exegesis, we still do not find the slightest attempt to show that our Lord ever in any way trusted to the State as the instrument for accomplishing His design. The usual way of avoiding this difficulty is to say that He could not be expected to look to a Pagan State as we are justified in looking to the Christian State. To this there are two very evident replies. First, Is the State ever Christian in our Lord’s sense? Second, It was not the Pagan but the Theocratic State our Lord dealt with nearly all His days. It was there waiting to be adopted; yet He lived chiefly in conflict with it, and He never attempted to reform it or work through it. He certainly expected His followers to have a good deal to do with States and kings and governors, but it would be in an extremely individualistic position ( Matthew 10:18), and all that was expected of them was not to fear them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul ( Matthew 10:28). Our Lord’s action was not revolutionary in the sense of actually overthrowing existing institutions, but He cannot be said to have cherished them. A certain regard was to be paid to the Scribes and Pharisees who sat in Moses’ seat ( Matthew 23:2), but He also subjected them to such criticism as must have sapped their power. He Himself so far honoured the religious institutions as not to oppose them; but the only evil He ever put His hand to the task of reforming, was that which disturbed the private worshipper ( Matthew 21:12-16,  John 2:13-17), and His entire indifference to ceremonial purity rejected a great deal of the institution to the advantage of the individual. All this might seem to refer rather to the Church than the State; but if He distrusted the leadership of the former, He would not be likely any more to trust the leadership of the latter, if it took over the guidance of life. It also would be the blind leading the blind. What our Lord manifestly expects to see, is what He calls the seed of the Kingdom ( Matthew 13:38), those who in every place are worthy, who are prepared to be as lights shining in a dark place. Why should He speak of the result as a Kingdom of God at all, if, in the final issue, it is only of man’s regulation? The meaning certainly lies very near, that it was a kingdom of souls regulated only by love, a kingdom of souls bent on a direct service and obedience to God, and requiring no other rule. This fundamental distinction between it and all other earthly kingdoms would seem to be the very reason for calling it of God .

This view is confirmed by what seems the most convincing explanation of our Lord’s temptations. To suppose that He was tempted merely by His own hunger and love of success and love of praise, is to ascribe to Him motives which had no power over Him at other times. But if they are temptations of His work, the temptation to provide a kingdom with fulness of bread and to rule by accepting the methods of force in the State and of display in the Church, we see how He could be touched in His deepest interests. When He turned from that way to the road that led by a solitary path to Calvary, to call many, but to choose only the few who also would be prepared to walk in it, He surely decided to look to the individual to save the institution, and not to the institution to save the individual. In view of all this, it cannot be questioned that the aristocrat in his peasant’s dress, digging his bread out of the earth, and living as if the social revolution had come, in the high conviction that the Divine way is personal surrender and not social supervision, represents Christ’s attitude better than the respectable persons who meantime take all the present system of competition will give, while they wait for salvation from the action of the State.

But Socialism only makes a pretence of being workable through the State, by ignoring the bearing which its action would have on the whole life of the individual, and it is with this larger question that our Lord is concerned. His Kingdom is not of this world, and its treasures are not upon earth, and it only concerns itself with the things upon earth as they have to do with the great treasure in heaven, which is character, and the great rule of the Kingdom, which is love. That He expected this idea to be embodied in an earthly society is plain, for the beginnings of it arose in His own lifetime. But it was to be a very singular society, in which none was to exercise authority on one hand, and none to call any man master on the other. The only dignity was to be service; and the higher the position, the lowlier one should serve. Nothing can reconcile this with the ecclesiastical embodiment of it in all ages, wherein the true succession has been placed in the officials, who determined not only action but belief, and who have penetrated further into the inner sanctuary of the individual life than any earthly government that ever existed. But no one recognized more fully than Christ Himself that the channels by which His influence would go down would intermingle their clay with the pure waters; and to assume that any organization is more than a dim human attempt at reaching out towards His ideal, is to neglect His own warnings. As the believer must be in the world, so he must be in the institution—in it but not of it, always retaining his right to consider whether Christ is there or not when men say, ‘Lo, here, or Lo, there. In so far as the institution serves this Kingdom of God, this kingdom of souls, whose only authority is God the Father as revealed in the Son, and whose only rule is love, it is to be honoured; but it must ever be prepared to be judged by that standard.

The great end of all progress, therefore, is not to subject the individual, but to call him to the realization of his own heritage of freedom. It is in the crowd that men have done all the great iniquities. The multitude come to take Christ; the disciples all in a body forsake Him; the rulers come together to judge Him; the whole band of soldiers is called together to buffet Him; the crowd cry, ‘Crucify Him’; the chief priests mock Him among themselves. Even those that were crucified with Him stilled their pain by falling in with the cry of the multitude. Whatever institution, therefore, we may submit to, we can only belong to the true Church by first of all having ‘salt in ourselves’ ( Mark 9:50), by being of the truth and hearing Christ’s voice ( John 18:37).

It is argued that the full meaning and claim of Christianity can never be explicable on the basis of Individualism, because ‘from first to last it deals with minds which are in relation with actual truth in regard to the soul, the world, and God, and which have not fully attained even the limits of their own nature till they are united in the Spirit-bearing Body, through Christ to the Father’ (Strong). Possibly Hume contends for the Individualism here refuted. Nobody else does. Why Christianity is so individualistic is precisely that the soul is so directly, or, at all events, can, through God’s revelation and grace, be so directly in contact with actual truth, the world and God, as to make it only a distraction for another man, on merely official grounds, to come in between as a necessary channel; that the possession of such a personal relation to truth is a common bond of more power than any external tie; and that the visible organization is only vital and useful as it expresses this union. The usual way is to say the Kingdom of God is a purely spiritual condition on the one hand, and has a place and effect in the world on the other; to seek no common basis; to avoid deriving one from the other; to ascribe methods of worldly rule to the visible society, and then to transfer to it the attributes of love and truth and holiness that belong to the invisible, and so to claim for it, in subjection, the obedience which belongs to the other, in freedom. It is quite true that a person in a state of salvation is one called and admitted into a society; but, just because it is a society of saved persons, it is different in its relation to its members from all visible societies. Instead of more submission to their teachers and more obedience to their rulers, the Scripture hope of progress is still what it was of old, ‘Would that the Lord’s people were all prophets,’—would that each man were less concerned about his neighbour and more about his own message and his own call! Men are always ready to organize others; the fruitful and difficult task is to organize one’s own soul.

Literature.—Butler’s Sermons , and, in contrast, Paley’s Moral Philosophy . For the extensive literature for and against Socialism, see Fabian Tract , No. 29, ‘What to Read: A List of Books for Social Reformers.’ For individual freedom, J. S. Mill, On Liberty  : Herhert Spencer, Man versus the State , and Sociology  ; Tolstoi, Essays , and many smaller works. On the relation of the individual to the Church, reference may be made to Loisy, L’Ëvangile et l’Ëglise [translation The Gospel and the Church , 1903]; Newman, The Development of Christian Doctrine , 1878; and T. B. Strong, God and the Individual , 1903.

John Oman.

Webster's Dictionary

(1): ( n.) An excessive or exclusive regard to one's personal interest; self-interest; selfishness.

(2): ( n.) The principle, policy, or practice of maintaining individuality, or independence of the individual, in action; the theory or practice of maintaining the independence of individual initiative, action, and interests, as in industrial organization or in government.

(3): ( n.) The quality of being individual; individuality; personality.

The Nuttall Encyclopedia

The name given to a social system which has respect to the rights of the individual as sovereign, and is strictly opposed to Socialism.