f multiple shops, combines, and rings makes the use
of the limited power a man had to affect a dealer by transferring his
custom to another merchant to dwindle yearly. Everywhere we turn we
find this adamantine front presented by the legislature, the State
departments, by the agencies of production, distribution, or credit, and
it is the undemocratic organization of society which is responsible for
nine-tenths of our social troubles. All the vested interests backed up
by economic and political power conflict with the public welfare, and
the general will, which intends the good of all, can act no more than
a paralyzed cripple can walk. We would all choose the physique of the
athlete, with his swift, unfettered, easy movements, rather than the
body of the cripple if we could, and we have this choice before us in
Ireland.

If we concentrate our efforts mainly on voluntary action, striving
to make the co-operative spirit predominant, the general will would
manifest itself through organizations malleable to that will, flexible
and readily adjusting themselves to the desires of the community.
To effect reforms we have not first to labor at the gigantic task of
affecting national opinion and securing the majorities necessary for
national action. In any district a hundred or two hundred men can at
any time form co-operative societies for production, purchase, sale, or
credit, and can link themselves by federation with other organizations
like their own to secure greater strength and economic efficiency. By
following this policy steadily we simplify our economic system, and
reduce to fewer factors the forces in conflict in society. We beget the
predominance of one principle, and enable that general will for good,
which Rousseau theorized about, to find agencies through which it can
manifest freely, so changing society from the static condition begot
by conflict and obstruction to a dynamic condition where energies and
desires manifest freely.

The general will, as Rousseau demonstrated, always intends the good, and
if permitted to act would act in a large and noble way. The change from
static to dynamic, from fixed forms to fluid forms, has been coming
swiftly over the world owing to the liberation of thought, and this in
spite of the obstruction of a society organized, I might almost say,
with egomania as the predominant psychological factor. The ancient
conception of Nature as a manifestation of spirit is incarnating anew
in