s progress taken place in this
department? Plainly we cannot answer these questions unless we have
chosen our end in life and are morally satisfied with it. In the history
of modern states we discover a tendency, more strongly marked in some
quarters than in others, towards that form of democracy which is called
responsible self-government. Government of the people, for the people,
by the people. The people are going to govern themselves. But they may
do so in a thousand different ways--each of which has a different moral
value. A people may go wrong just as fatally in governing itself as in
being governed by some external authority. I confess that nothing I can
learn from the history of government entirely reassures me on this
point. I see everywhere progress towards organization, but then one is
bound to ask on what ulterior end is this organization directed? I see
everywhere a growing subordination of the individual to the State. This
may or may not be a very good thing. What _kind of State_ is it to which
the individual is becoming subordinated? There are great differences
among them--some seem to me, one in particular at the present time,
thoroughly bad, and I cannot see that the individual gains morally by
being subordinated to such a State--at least if he gains in one
direction he loses more in another.

Even the social unity which Governments are capable of achieving must
not be too hastily translated into moral progress. We are entitled to
ask several questions before the one can be equated with the other. To
begin with, do men know what they want to achieve by their unified life?
And if they do know what they want, have we not still the right to
criticize its moral value and say 'this is right' or this is wrong?
Should the time ever come when the common will of mankind should get
itself expressed by the decrees of a universal democracy, would moral
criticism be at an end so far as the said decrees were concerned? For my
part I cannot see that it would. Perhaps it were truer to say that only
then would moral criticism effectively begin. As things now are, we are
prevented from criticizing the common will because none of us knows what
exactly the common will demands. But if it could get itself expressed
and defined by the decrees of a perfect democracy we should know. Those
decrees would reveal the human community to itself, and it is possible
that the revelation would not be altogether agreeable to our moral
se