lives do not
represent the most favourable conditions of the soul. It is not poverty
that matters; but strain and the presence of anxiety and fear, the
impossibility of detachment. Therefore this oppression at least would
have to be lightened, before the social conscience could be at ease.
Moreover as society advances along this way, every--even the most
subtle--kind of cruelty and exploitation of self-advantage obtained to
the detriment of other individuals, must tend to be eliminated; because
here the drag-back of the past will be more and more completely
conquered, its instincts fully sublimated, and no one will care to do
those things any more. Bringing new feelings and more real concepts to
our contact with our environment, we shall, in accordance with the law
of apperception, see this environment in a different way; and so obtain
from it a fresh series of experiences. The scale of pain and pleasure
will be altered. We shall feel a searching responsibility about the way
in which our money is made, and about any disadvantages to others which
our amusements or comforts may involve.

Here, perhaps, it is well to register a protest against the curious but
prevalent notion that any such concentrated effort for the
spiritualization of society must tend to work itself out in the
direction of a maudlin humanitarianism, a soft and sentimental reading
of life. This idea merely advertises once more the fact that we still
have a very mean and imperfect conception of God, and have made the
mistake of setting up a water-tight bulkhead; between His revelation, in
nature and His discovery in the life of prayer. It shows a failure to
appreciate the stern, heroic aspect of Reality; the element of austerity
in all genuine religion, the distinction between love and
sentimentalism, the rightful place of risk, effort, even suffering, in
all full achievement and all joy. If we are surrendered in love to the
purposes of the Spirit, we are committed to the bringing out of the
best possible in life; and this is a hard business, involving a quite
definite social struggle with evil and atavism, in which some one is
likely to be hurt. But surely that manly spirit of adventure which has
driven men to the North Pole and the desert, and made them battle with
delight against apparently impossible odds, can here find its
appropriate sublimation?

If anyone who has followed these arguments, and now desires to bring
them from idea into practice, a