tions: for
they bring vividly before us both the idealism which should inspire all
who labour at the task of government and the vastness and variety of the
field with which they are concerned. Looked at in this broad light, the
history of man's common life in the world will, I think, show two great
streams of progress--the progress of man over Nature, or, as we say
to-day, in the control of his environment, and the progress of man in
what is essentially a moral task--the art of living together with his
fellows. These two aspects of human activity and effort are in constant
contact and interaction. Studied together, they reveal an advance which,
in spite of man's ever-present moral weakness, may be described as an
advance from Chaos to Cosmos in the organization of the world's common
life; yet they are so distinct in method and spirit that they can best
be described separately.

Let us first, then, consider the history of Government, as a record of
the progress of man's power over Nature.

Human history, in this sphere, is the story of man making himself at
home in the world. When human history begins we find men helpless,
superstitious, ignorant, the plaything of blind powers in the natural
and animal world. Superstitious because he was helpless, helpless
because he was ignorant, he eked out a bare existence rather by avoiding
than controlling the forces in the little world by which he found
himself surrounded. Human life in its earliest stages is, as Hobbes
described it, nasty, brutish, and short. Man was the slave of his
environment. He has risen to become its master. The world, as the
prophetic eye of Francis Bacon foretold, has become 'The Kingdom of
Man'.

How complete this conquest is, can best be realized perhaps by
considering man's relation to the lower animals. When history opens, the
animals are in their element; it is man who is the interloper. Two
thousand years ago it was not the Society of Friends but wolves and wild
boars who felt themselves at home on the site of Bournville Garden
Village. To-day we are surprised when we read that in remote East Africa
lions and giraffes venture occasionally to interfere in the murderous
warfare between man and man. Man has imposed himself on the animals, by
dint of his gradual accumulation of knowledge and his consequent power
of organization and government. He has destroyed the conditions under
which the animals prospered. He has, as we might say, destroyed their