142 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



as indeed it does to a lesser degree all the great 

 literatures of the world. It is a similar note which 

 characterizes the inner life of all the higher forms of 

 religion. " Except ye become as little children " 

 ye cannot enter the higher life or see with the higher 

 vision is the sustained expression of this fact in the 

 Christian religion. 



The evolutionary bearing of these phenomena 

 cannot be mistaken. Once there has been grasped 

 the central significance of the emotion of the ideal 

 in relation to collective efficiency and of the cir- 

 cumstance that it is only in the mind of the 

 child that the emotion of the ideal can be 

 evoked in the conditions in which it produces 

 its highest, its most permanent, and its most 

 transforming results upon the cultural heredity of 

 civilization, the reach of the facts is evident. A 

 knowledge of the meaning of such facts is the first 

 step to the science of power in civilization. For 

 what we are really watching in the phenomena 

 described is the gradual emergence into view of 

 what has become the principal cause of collective 

 efficiency in the era of the social integration of the 

 world. 



The overmastering and revolutionary effect of the 

 emotion of the ideal in the mind of the child directed 

 through the cultural inheritance of civilization 



