go his own
interests must be eventually discovered to be, as it fundamentally is,
unreasonable. {251} If, on the other hand, for the individual to
forego them is (as, in a cool moment, we all recognise it to be)
reasonable, then the interests under the sanction of the god and the
community--the higher interests--cannot be other than, they must be
identical with, the real interests of the individual. It is only in
and through society that the individual can attain his highest
interests, and only by doing the will of the god that he can so attain
them. Doubtless--despite of logic and feeling--in all communities all
individuals in a greater or less degree have deliberately preferred the
lower to the higher, and in so doing have been actuated neither by love
of God nor by love of their fellow-man. But, in so doing, they have at
all times, in the latest as well as the earliest stages of society,
been felt to be breaching the very basis of social solidarity, the
maintenance of which is the will of the God worshipped by society.

From that point of view the individual is regarded as a means. But he
is also in himself an end, intrinsically as valuable as any other
member of the community, and therefore an end which society exists to
further and promote. It is impossible, therefore, that the end, viewed
as that which society {252} as well as the individual aims at, and
which society must realise, as far as it can realise it, through the
individual, should be one which can only be attained by some future
state of society in which he does not exist. "The kingdom of Heaven is
within you" and not something to which you cannot attain. God is not
far from us at any time. That truth was implicit at all stages in the
evolution of religion--consciously recognised, perhaps more, perhaps
less, but whether more or less consciously recognised, it was there.
That is the conviction implied in the fact that man everywhere seeks
God. If he seeks Him in plants, in animals, in stocks or stones, that
only shows that man has tried in many wrong directions--not that there
is not a right direction. It is the general law of evolution: of a
thousand seeds thrown out, perhaps one alone falls into good soil. But
the failure of the 999 avails nothing against the fact that the one
bears fruit abundantly. What sanctifies the failures is that they were
attempts. We indeed may, if we are so selfish and blind, regard the
attempts as made in order