to make each part inoperative, that, at a time when
the whole community is strangely alive with good will, the actual
social achievement is beyond measure disappointing.

The test of success or failure is the degree of satisfaction afforded
to the common man. By the "common man" I do not mean the inferior man,
but the man who has not specialised himself out of his common
humanity. If there is any interest which an honest lawyer can share
with an honest fisherman, a decent cockney with a decent Bedouin Arab,
he does it in virtue of this nobler "commonness;" it may include the
interests of good fellowship, of delight in song or nature, of a
belief in God, and a host of indescribable interests which do not
belong to the mechanism and compulsory organisation of life; it
includes some "dram of folly," some capacity for "laughable blunder"
in intercourse between men. Culture may break in upon this
"commonness" and destroy it. But it need not be so. Shakespeare has
this commonness in a high degree; so have Johnson, and Goldsmith, and
Lamb; all great artists have had it when their culture has not crazed
them, or when they have not lifted themselves into an almost mystical
absorption in exercising some gift of austere, monumental expression;
in which case, like Milton, they scarcely belong to the category of
humans; their food is ambrosial, and their wine is nectar.

The task of the inspired politician has become harder in proportion as
the problem of government has become more intricate and more
specialised. He must work through his machinery, which includes not
only the administrative machine, but all those groups, in and out of
Parliament, limited by their ethical and sentimental specialities. He
must be professional enough to appreciate the ground of their
excellences, and "common" enough to discard their limitations. It is
only when there are several such men, powerful enough to leaven
politics and lead politicians, that modern democracy can have any
shadow of reality--men who understand the rank and file of humanity,
conversant also with the complicated machine and the contending groups
of narrowly defined ideals, men fired with that constructive
imagination which crystallises in common sense.

III

SPECIALISM IN RELIGION

It is significant that the name "Religion of Humanity" was given to a
set of tenets which strictly speaking contained no religion at all.
Positivism gained ground in middle-Victorian Engla