necessary that it should be at the end of
our mental chain. The bird is the thing to be aimed at--not with a gun,
but a life-bestowing wand. What is essential to our right thinking is
this: that the egg and the bird must not be thought of as equal cosmic
occurrences recurring alternatively forever. They must not become a mere
egg and bird pattern, like the egg and dart pattern. One is a means
and the other an end; they are in different mental worlds. Leaving
the complications of the human breakfast-table out of account, in an
elemental sense, the egg only exists to produce the chicken. But the
chicken does not exist only in order to produce another egg. He may also
exist to amuse himself, to praise God, and even to suggest ideas to a
French dramatist. Being a conscious life, he is, or may be, valuable
in himself. Now our modern politics are full of a noisy forgetfulness;
forgetfulness that the production of this happy and conscious life
is after all the aim of all complexities and compromises. We talk of
nothing but useful men and working institutions; that is, we only think
of the chickens as things that will lay more eggs. Instead of seeking to
breed our ideal bird, the eagle of Zeus or the Swan of Avon, or whatever
we happen to want, we talk entirely in terms of the process and the
embryo. The process itself, divorced from its divine object, becomes
doubtful and even morbid; poison enters the embryo of everything; and
our politics are rotten eggs.

Idealism is only considering everything in its practical essence.
Idealism only means that we should consider a poker in reference to
poking before we discuss its suitability for wife-beating; that we
should ask if an egg is good enough for practical poultry-rearing before
we decide that the egg is bad enough for practical politics. But I know
that this primary pursuit of the theory (which is but pursuit of the
aim) exposes one to the cheap charge of fiddling while Rome is burning.
A school, of which Lord Rosebery is representative, has endeavored to
substitute for the moral or social ideals which have hitherto been the
motive of politics a general coherency or completeness in the social
system which has gained the nick-name of "efficiency." I am not very
certain of the secret doctrine of this sect in the matter. But, as
far as I can make out, "efficiency" means that we ought to discover
everything about a machine except what it is for. There has arisen in
our time a most