ns are manifestations of
soul. If there has been progress in institutions there must have been an
equal progress in the souls which are the real forces by which progress
is always won. As history has been the evolution of humanity toward
finer forms, so it is the assurance that the forces which have been at
work in the past will not cease, but steadily continue until "the pile
is complete." The perfect society will be composed of perfected
individuals. History as prophecy is harmonious with soul as prophecy.

The future state of the soul has been the subject of rare fascination
for the world's great thinkers. Nearly all religions have a forward
look. "The Golden Age" lies far in the distance, but it has commanded
the faith of all the seers. It has sometimes been a dream concerning
individuals, and again a vision of the perfected society, but in reality
the two are one, for the social organism is but a congeries of
individuals. Bacon dreamed of New Atlantis, Sir Thomas More saw the fair
walls of Utopia rising in the future, Plato defined the boundaries of
the ideal Republic, Augustine wrote of the glories of the _Civitate
Dei_, and Tennyson with matchless music has sung of the crowning race:--

"Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be."

The common characteristic of these social ideals is their dependence on
the culture of individuals. With the incoming of "the valiant man and
free," the man of "larger heart and kindlier hand," there is a
reasonable hope that the darkness of the land will disappear.

With that deep look into the inmost secrets of human experience which
sounds strangely autobiographical, Browning wrote in "Rabbi Ben Ezra,"

"Praise be thine!
I see the whole design,
I, who saw power, see love now perfect too;
Perfect I call thy plan;
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"

"Therefore I summon age
To grant youth's heritage,
Life's struggle having so far reached its term;
Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a god though in the germ."

Those last lines condense Brownin