will is best expressed, it is in the corporation also that the individual will is best controlled and trained into harmony with the general will; "licked into civic shape," we might say. If, as has been urged, every one should be secured by society in the power of getting and keeping the means of realising a will which in possibility is a will directed to social good, it is obviously the business of the institutional system not merely to guarantee that "power" but also to increase that "possibility". That" possibility," it is suggested, will most naturally be increased if the citizen be trained in a corporate milieu. It is no good removing the alternative possibility of the individual will being directed toward social evil. Morality cannot be enacted: and if property, the power in question, be taken away, an attack is made on spontaneity, and moral motives are destroyed. The citizens must make possible but difficult the uncivic life, if it is to make possible and easy the civic life.

Now the "civilisation" of the individual will best be achieved if the ethical idea of tempering one's own natural instinct for self-advancement by the consciousness that such self-advancement will only be good when it harmonises with the general will of that section of society at any rate with which the individual is in most immediate and continual contact,-if this idea be crystallised into institutions. Such an institution is the family. But this idea is not the basic principle of the family: nor is his family the central fact of a man's life. This idea would be the basic principle of the corporation we propose as the political unit, and this corporation would be hinged upon the central fact of life.

It is impossible to abolish competition or its necessary symptom-profit. But you can abolish its accidental symptoms-cheapness and destitution. It is not indeed desirable to abolish competition itself-so vital a condition of social progress is it. But if competition between groups be substituted for competition between individuals—so much tribute being paid to modern economic conditions -the poisonous consequences of free competition will be eliminated so far as nature will permit. Modify the instinct for self-advancement into the instinct for groupadvancement: don't stop the fight, but give a man brothers to raise him lest fighting he should fall: train him to play for his team that the game of progress may go on.

The principle has long been recognised in this country, but the means of carrying it out in the education of the young has been a public prerogative of the possessing classes. It is the essence of the public school spirit, but the public schools are expensive. Still, in the limited area to which its practice is confined, the principle has been powerful for good. To be a Rugbean, to be a Wykehamist is to have learned to expand your ego; to achieve things shoulder to shoulder with other men; to feel the thrill of fellowship. That is the secret of "tone," which is a symphony of deeds. Further, an individual has no history behind him, merely ancestors: no destiny, only descendants. A corporate body has history and has destiny. This is a fine value in fellowship. The voice of John Ball, speaking from the Village Cross, inevitably recurs: "Ah, my brothers, what an evil doom is this, to have none to love you and to speak with you, to be with

out fellowship! Foorsooth, brothers, fellowship is heaven and lack of fellowship is hell: fellowship is life and lack of fellowship is death: and the deeds that ye do upon earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them, and the life that is in it, that shall live on and on for ever and each one of you part of it, while many a man's life upon the earth from the earth shall wane."

The place of associations-whether they have been the school of a man or the regiment of a man or the banded enthusiasts of an idea-looms big in history. There is no time to dwell upon the power of group action: upon the thousand who held the Gate of Greece, or the thousand that built the Kingdom of Italy. In some countries the instinct for association has survived more obviously than in others. It is especially a force in France. It has especially been beaten down in England. But all the world over tribe and totem, maegth and mir, the clan of the mountain, the city of the plain, the free companions of the old world, the freemasons of the new, show that, if the exploits of heroes be excepted, men are most fertile of idea and of achievement, most active, most human when they are banded so. They were local levies that resisted the Poll Tax of 1380. It was a Community -that of Mousehold Heath-that best resisted Tudor tyranny. Not unwisely did Stein commence the work of preparing the War of Liberation by municipal reform : the reorganisation of the groups.

High and trenchant things have been achieved by the extension of the self-regarding spirit: political things, having a message for wide communities of men. But we would insist that there is a limit beyond which that ex

tension cannot effectively be carried. The great soul of a Goethe may refuse to confine fervent affection to that small fraction of humanity that speaks his tongue. Just as an Alexander may sigh for more worlds to conquer, a Francis of Assisi may sob for more worlds to love. More commonly a patriot Arnst may sigh for a land which shall father all his race. But it is not the racial, any more than it is the cosmopolitan impulse in which the altruistic enthusiasm of the individual most generally manifests itself. Most frequently a man loves his neighbour in a valley: his comrade in a deed: his companion on a journey: his fellow at a bench.

The German Empire is founded, but the wide levels of Pomerania welcome home no dweller by the long blue Swabian Sea. The cosmopolitanism of capital is breaking down that great quarantine of frontiers, but the Northumbrian still walks a stranger in London Town when Newcastle United have won through to the Cup Final. A man has better opportunity to distinguish out a shire or a town than to realise a country. One knows his Wessex. One his Manchester. But "what can they know of England, who only England know?" How many a patriot has breathed that has never realised his country, but whose heart has often enough leapt within him before the dear serried lights of his own familiar city, or the ruddy sunset burnishing the hills of home?

I would not be understood not to value the Nationgroup. It is no insult to the body to ask whether the organs be sound within it. I say create the lesser group that the greater may be vigorous. Display the littler vision that the practised eyes at length may view the

grand horizon. Teach men to adore the gonfalon. Then they will learn the meaning of the Jack.

My illustrations have been geographical. But it is not meant that the required groups are to be geographical. It is indeed now time to consider what must be the basis of the groups within the Societas Societatum.

(3) Since material and spiritual independence and activity in the individual are conditional upon his possession and use of economic utilities, property must be kept distributed. The distribution of property can only be perpetuated consistently with an adequately high standard of productivity if industrial undertakings be based upon a cooperative principle. The Poleis within the Nation-state must, then, be industrial; must primarily be Societies of Producers.

It was pointed out above that the second respect in which the Aristotelian differed from the Nation-state was economic in character.

It consisted in the different status of economic activities, and the consequently different importance of the manipulation of the means of production considered as an incident in civic life.

The vital hours of the citizen of the City-state were those of his leisure-the hours, that is, which he devoted to such occupations as the study and practice of the fine arts: the study and practice of letters: philosophical disputation above all, tenure of administrative office and attendance at the primary assembly of citizens. All such activities and only such activities were of strictly political importance, in that they were supposed to ad