ritating but inevitable restriction upon the "natural" sovereignty and
entire self-government of the individual. That was the dream of the
egotist. It was a theory in which men were seen to strut in the proud
consciousness of their several and "absolute" capacities. It would be as
instructive as it would be difficult to count the errors it has bred in
political thinking. As a matter of fact, men have never dreamed of wishing
to do without the "trammels" of organized society, for the very good reason
that those trammels are in reality no trammels at all, but indispensable
aids and spurs to the attainment of the highest and most enjoyable things
man is capable of. Political society, the life of men in states, is an
abiding natural relationship. It is neither a mere convenience nor a mere
necessity. It is not a mere voluntary association, not a mere corporation.
It is nothing deliberate or artificial, devised for a special purpose. It
is in real truth the eternal and natural expression and embodiment of a
form of life higher than that of the individual--that common life of mutual
helpfulness, stimulation, and contest which gives leave and opportunity to
the individual life, makes it possible, makes it full and complete.

It is in such a scene that man looks about to discover his own place and
force. In the midst of men organized, infinitely cross-related, bound by
ties of interest, hope, affection, subject to authorities, to opinion, to
passion, to visions and desires which no man can reckon, he casts eagerly
about to find where he may enter in with the rest and be a man among his
fellows. In making his place he finds, if he seek intelligently and with
eyes that see, more than ease of spirit and scope for his mind. He finds
himself--as if mists had cleared away about him and he knew at last his
neighborhood among men and tasks.

What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives himself so long as he
imagines it to lie in self-indulgence, so long as he deems himself the
center and object of effort. His mind is spent in vain upon itself. Not in
action itself, not in "pleasure," shall it find its desires satisfied, but
in consciousness of right, of powers greatly and nobly spent. It comes to
know itself in the motives which satisfy it, in the zest and power of
rectitude. Christianity has liberated the world, not as a system of ethics,
not as a philosophy of altruism, but by its revelation of the power of pure
and unselfish lov