POWER IN CIVILIZATION 119 



solely to the realization of the ideals of war. It is 

 visible in the influence of ideas, and of standards 

 of opinion on classes, groups, and unions of men. 

 But the most striking and permanent results of 

 psychic emotion thus transmitted in civilization are 

 visible in the intensive culture of mind and spirit 

 which forms of belief, and especially the higher 

 types of religion, are capable of producing on men 

 and peoples. 



With the single exception of gigantic effort devoted 

 to the national ideal of sacrifice in the cause of 

 successful war, of which the results in recent history 

 have been astounding, the world has witnessed no 

 example in its history of the idealisms of mind 

 universally imposed through intensive culture on 

 the youth of civilization in conditions of emotion 

 and with all the equipment and resources of modern 

 civilization in the background. The great systems 

 of religion which have come nearest to realizing 

 such a conception in the past have not so far even 

 remotely approached what is possible under modern 

 conditions of knowledge. We are on the verge of a 

 new era of civilization, and the people or the type 

 of civilization which will first succeed in this experi- 

 ment will obtain control of all the reservoirs of force 

 in civilization in a manner which has never been 

 thought possible in the past. 



