John Dewey: “For it will be alive and flexible as well as stable, responsive to the complex and world-wide scene in which it is…”

In this distinction we find the germ of the distinction between the private and the public.

For the older symbols of ideal life still engage thought and command loyalty.

The easiest way out was to go back to the naked individual, to sweep away all associations as foreign to his nature and rights save as they proceeded from his own voluntary choice, and guaranteed his own private ends.

There are even those who hold that the presumption is always that social loss will result from agents of the public doing anything which could be done by persons in their private capacity.