SOCIETY DEPENDS ON MAN 287 



have we really heard that cry. Echoes of it have reached 

 us from other lands and other times ; but we have not 

 ourselves witnessed J^^jireajdfulj^ 

 Statej nor seen, as our neighbours once saw across the 

 channel, the boiling up of the great deeps of society, the 

 confused mingling of all its forces, which reduced the 

 wisdom of man into folly and melted his strength into 

 water. We have found the British State ever stable and 

 strong, although we have had our times of suffering and 

 distress. It seems to move, all too slowly perhaps, but 

 with the peaceful security of a star, in obedience to tried 

 laws of public welfare, towards fuller individual liberty and 

 broader social justice. We may acknowledge that its 

 welfare is our own, and that it is the ultimate source of 

 all our benefits ; but its very greatness and security conceals __ 

 its dependence upon ourselves. ; ' What am I to it ? " we 

 say : " Less than is the single leaf to the forest oak." 



Nor is it from its magnitude and stability alone that 

 any service we can render to it seems of so little importance. 

 The modern State is exceedingly complex. There are 

 within it numberless minor organizations industrial, com- 

 mercial, educational, religious which are more or less 

 remote from the direct interests of the State, and which 

 claim and occupy all our powers. In the ancient civic 

 State the services of the individual to it were as direct as 

 they were manifold. He was its soldier in time of war, 

 he was its priest, its judge, its legislator in times of peace. 

 But the defence of the modern State is in other hands than 

 those of the ordinary citizen, and so are the administration 

 and the institution of its laws. Instead of making these 

 laws, and laying his hand directly on the helm of the State 

 he has but one voice amongst many thousands in electing 



