CONSERVATIVES AND INDIVIDUALITY 37

that is, a person who subscribes unreservedly to "indivi-

dualism," the political ideologymeans a disciple of

William Godwin, Thomas Hodgskin, and Herbert

Spencer. Now Godwin and Hodgskin were doctrinaire

radicals, and Spencerthough there are conservative ele-

ments in some of his writingsnever would have thought

of calling himself a conservative.

An Individualist of the school of Godwin and

Hodgskin believes that every man is a law unto himself,

that established social institutionsparticularly the es-

tablished forms of private propertyare irrational, that

traditional religion and traditional morality are mostly

nonsense, and that every man should do in every respect

just as he pleases. Now whatever may be said of these no-

tions, they certainly are not conservative; and so Amer-

icans of conservative inclinations who call themselves "In-

dividualists" run the risk of confusing the whole discus-

sion and bringing conservatism into disrepute. They may

play directly into the hands of the socialists, who declare

that the conservative is a heartless individualist, and there-

fore devoted to ruthless competition, perfectly selfish, and

hostile toward everything charitable and venerable in the

world. A real conservative, however, cannot be a real in-

dividualist. The thoroughgoing individualist, in the

strict sense of that term, is hostile toward religion, toward

patriotism, toward the inheritance of property, and to-

ward the past. A conservative, on the contrary, is a friend

to religious belief, to national loyalty, to established

rights in society, and to the wisdom of our ancestors.

I have been speaking above of the strict meaning of

the political term "individualism." The conservative,

however, is an individualist in the sense that he believes

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