THE CALL OF THE LAND 



Politics, society, the eager life of man 

 among men, confessedly belong to this 

 world. They are relations which, in their 

 present form, seem finite and temporary. 

 No wonder that we despise them ; no won- 

 der that we are of the monk's old spirit still. 

 A great deal of secular teaching confirms 

 people in these false ideas. 



Very prevalent yet is the mistake which 

 the political philosophy of a crude age be- 

 queathed us of regarding society and the 

 state as arbitrary creations, not attaching to 

 man in a condition of nature, but artificially 

 fadged on later. Nothing could be more 

 contradictory to common sense or history. 

 Very deep, when rightly understood, is that 

 thought of the Old Testament that society 

 was instituted by God himself, who deemed 

 it "not good for man to live alone." It 

 means that the origination of the social state 

 is no less than the production of man him- 

 self, one of the starting points in the evolu- 

 tion of the universe. In the doctrine of man 

 as a political animal, Moses anticipates 



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