and in common.
It was a common interest to preserve it intact. It was to their interest
to have a numerous membership of the clan, because it made it less
liable to attack. Men were drawn by the social order out of merely
personal interests into a larger life. In their organizations they were
unconsciously groping, as all human organizations are, towards the final
solidarity of humanity--the federation of the world.

Well, these old rural communities disappeared. The greater organizations
of nation or empire regarded the smaller communities jealously in the
past, and broke them up and gathered all the strings of power into
capital cities. The result was a growth of the State, with a local decay
of civic, patriotic, or public feeling, ending in bureaucracies and
State departments, where paid officials, devoid of intimacy with local
needs, replaced the services naturally and voluntarily rendered in an
earlier period. The rural population, no longer existing as a rural
community, sank into stagnation. There was no longer a common interest,
a social order turning their minds to larger than individual ends. Where
feudalism was preserved, the feudal chief, if the feeling of noblesse
oblige was strong, might act as a centre of progress, but where this was
lacking social decay set in. The difficulty of moving the countryman,
which has become traditional, is not due to the fact that he lives in
the country, but to the fact that he lives in an unorganized society.
If in a city people want an art gallery or public baths or recreation
grounds, there is a machinery which can be set in motion; there are
corporations and urban councils which can be approached. If public
opinion is evident--and it is easy to organize public opinion in a
town--the city representatives will consider the scheme, and if they
approve and it is within their power as a council, they are able to levy
rates to finance the art gallery, recreation grounds, public gardens,
or whatever else. Now let us go to a country district where there is no
organization. It may be obvious to one or two people that the place is
perishing and the intelligence of its humanity is decaying, lacking some
centre of life. They want a village hall, but how is it to be obtained?
They begin talking about it to this person or that. They ask these
people to talk to their friends, and the ripples go out weakening and
widening for months, perhaps for years. I know of districts where this
has