t that it will be in the body
politic what the spinal column is to the body--the pillar on which it
rests, the strongest single factor in the body. Another illustration
may make still clearer my meaning. In a red sunsetting the glow is so
powerful that green hills, white houses, and blue waters, touched by
its light, assume a ruddy color, partly a local color, and partly a
reflected light from the sun. Now in the same way, what is most powerful
in society multiplies images and shadows of itself, and produces
harmonies with itself which are yet not identities. It is by a
predominating idea that nations achieve the practical unity of their
citizens, and national progress becomes possible. In the future
structure of society I have no doubt there will be elements to which the
socialist, the syndicalist, the capitalist, and the individualist will
have contributed. By degrees it will be discovered what enterprises
are best directed by the State, by municipalities, by groups, or by
individuals. But if the idea of democratic control is predominant, those
enterprises which are otherwise directed will yet meet the prevalent
mood by adopting the ideas of the treatment of the workers enforced in
democratically controlled enterprises, and will in every respect, except
control, make their standards equal. All the needles of being point to
the centres where power is most manifested. The effects of the French
revolution--a democratic upheaval--invaded men's minds everywhere. Even
the autocratically ruled States, hitherto careless about the people in
their underworlds, had to make advances to democracy, and give it some
measure of the justice democracy threatened to deal to itself. Without
demanding absolutism I do desire a predominant democratic character in
our national enterprises, rather than a confused muddle or struggle of
interests where nothing really emerges except the egoism of those who
struggle.

It will be noticed that in all that has preceded I have referred little
to action by government, though it is on governments that democracies
over the world are now fixing all their hopes. They believe the State
is the right agency to bring about reforms and changes in society. And
I must here explain why I do not share their hopes. My distrust of the
State in economic reform is based on the belief that governments in
great nation-states, even representative governments, are not malleable
by the general will. They are too easily dom