vices. In times of peace and prosperity there
seems to be no great cause at stake. Of course, always it is there, but
we do not see it. We become increasingly absorbed in selfish interests,
in the good of our immediate family. Thus petty, time-serving
selfishness is the vice peculiarly characteristic of times of peace and
prosperity. Consider, for instance, the spirit of France during the
closing years of the nineteenth century, and at the present dark, but
pregnant, hour of destiny.

Thus the question is not whether you have peace or war, but what you do
with your peace or war. It is not whether you are rich or poor, but
what you do with your riches or poverty.

Suppose we were able to reconstruct our entire social and industrial
world, so that every human being would have plenty to eat, plenty to
wear and a comfortable house to live in: would we have the kingdom of
heaven? Not necessarily: we might have merely a comfortable,
well-decorated pig-sty, if men lived to nothing higher than pigs. "Man
cannot live by bread alone," important as bread is, but by dedication to
the things of the spirit.

Thus there must ever be the capacity for self-forgetfulness,
self-sacrifice, the dedication of life to supreme aims, but that does
not mean the dedication of man to the institution. Rather it is the
consecration to the welfare of humanity. Man for the State means
autocracy and imperialism; Man for Mankind is the soul of democracy.
That is the ideal to which we must rise, if democracy is to prove itself
worthy to be the form of human society for the great future.

This ideal is realized through many lesser forms and instruments, but
always with the same final test. The family, for instance, is one of
these lesser forms, and the subordination of the individual to the
family unit is just. Thus there is a measure of right in seeking first
the interest of the family group; but when this is sought to the end of
special privilege and debauching luxury, against the welfare of all, it
becomes, as we have seen, an evil.

There is, similarly, a certain justice in the subordination of the
individual to the social class or group interest. It is right that
artisans should unite in trade unions, that employers should get
together in associations for common benefit. One need only contrast the
conditions where each workman had to bid in competition against all
others, and each manufacturer, the same, to realize the advance made