A NOTE IN REVIEW 



" For government, though high and low and lower, 

 Put into parts doth keep in one consent, 

 Congreeing in a full and natural close 

 Like music." 



But where is the master musician and his orchestral 

 leaders? Whose hands arrange the parts, direct the 

 performers, give unity to the whole, and from their 

 wondrous "congreeing" of action bring forth this per- 

 fect piece of social harmony? The Spirit of the Com- 

 mune! do you say? It is a phrase to drape our igno- 

 rance. The reasonable answer still evades the student's 

 grasp. Though the natural philosopher may justly 

 claim that "in nature's infinite book of secrecy a little 

 I can read," here is a page for whose interpretation no 

 Daniel yet has come. Beyond the veil of recorded 

 science an insoluble, at least an unsolved, mystery lies. 



This we perceive: Every ant is a law unto itself; 

 and in every individual the self-directing faculty is well- 

 nigh perfect. There is no private property. All citizens 

 are equals absolutely equals in ownership of the com- 

 munal property and in the use of, the authority over, and 

 the service and responsibility for the same. All serve, 

 save natural dependents; but all apparently are free to 

 choose the quality, the period, and the amount of service. 

 There is no visible head, no representative class or body 

 within which the control of the commonwealth is em- 

 bodied; and yet, by some occult force hitherto un- 

 known to men, all the beneficent effects of government 

 are wrought out with the regularity and precision of 

 an automatic machine. It is true to-day, as when 

 Solomon announced it many centuries ago, that this 

 work goes on without "guide, overseer, or ruler." 



Here, in this strange commune, with its absolute law 



303 



