THE MIND OF WOMAN 255 



the Herbert Spencer Lecture for the year. 1 In the 

 restrained and sobered language suitable to the 

 occasion I endeavoured to convey the message I 

 had to deliver. To the audience present I en- 

 deavoured gently to break it, that the world 

 into which they had been born was dead. Those 

 who were still young, I said, would probably live 

 to see great happenings. The rule of the old 

 individualistic theories of Power upon which the 

 world, and in particular the mind of England, had 

 been nurtured in history had passed for ever. 

 My message was that it was the beliefs and the 

 conceptions possessing the power of organizing 

 the minds of men through long stretches of time 

 into systems of action in which the present was 

 subordinated to an ideal in the future which would 

 rule the world in the times at hand. I did not 

 hesitate to apply the message in the prediction to 

 which I passed. " The next age will probably be 

 the age of the Germanization of the world. For 

 it is those lessons of which the first stages 

 have been displayed in the history of modern 

 Prussia which are likely to be worked out in 

 their fuller applications by successful States in the 

 future." * 



This message to the mind of England of a few 



1 Individualism and After, p. 31. 



