"The advantage to efficiency of the decentralization of decisions and of individual responsibility is even greater, perhaps, than the nineteenth century supposed; and the reaction against self-interest may have gone too far. ...[I]ndividualism, if it can be purged of its defects and its abuses, is the best safeguard of personal liberty... compared with any other system, it greatly widens the field for the exercise of personal choice. It is also the best safeguard of the variety of life... the loss of which is the greatest of all losses of the homogeneous or totalitarian state. For this variety preserves the traditions which embody the most secure and successful choices of former generations; it colours the present with the diversification of its fancy; and, being the handmaid of experiment as well as of tradition and of fancy, it is the most powerful instrument to better the future."