e community share these
acquirements in fairly equal measure. So far, however, as the communal
profits consist of more or less abstract ideas, embodied in religious
and philosophic thought, and stored away in books and literature
accessible only to scholars, they are distributed very unequally. The
more highly developed and consequently differentiated the society, the
more difficult does distribution become. The very structure of the
highly differentiated communal organism forbids the equal distribution
of these goods. The literary and ruling minority have exclusive access
to the treasures. The industrial majority are more and more rigidly
excluded from them. Thus, although it is strictly true that every
advance in the communal principle accrues to the benefit of the
individual, it is not true that such advance necessarily accrues to
the benefit of every individual, or equally to all individuals. In its
lowest stages, developing communalism lifts all its individual members
to about the same level of mental and moral acquirement. In its middle
stages it develops all individuals to a certain degree, and certain
individuals to a high degree. In its highest stages it develops among
all its members a uniformly high grade of personal worth and
acquirement.

Now the great problem on whose solution depends the possibility of
continued communal evolution is, from this view-point, the problem of
distributing the gains of the community to all its members more and
more equally. It is the problem of giving to each human unit all the
best and truest thought and character, all the highest and noblest
ideals and motives, which the most advanced individuals have secured.
If we stop to inquire minutely and analytically just what is the
nature of the greatest attainments made by the community, we discover
that it is not the possession of wealth in land or gold, it is not the
accident of social rank, it is not any incident of temporal happiness
or physical ease of life. It consists, on the contrary, in the
discovery of the real nature of man. He is no mere animal, living in
the realm of things and pleasures, limited by the now and the here. He
is a person, a rational being. His thoughts and desires can only be
expressed in terms of infinity. Nothing short of the infinite can
satisfy either his reason or his heart Though living in nature and
dependent on it, he is above it, and may and should understand it and
rule it. His thoughts embrace