224 The Ideal State 



the author of " Social Evolution " : " The most dis- 

 tinctive feature of human evolution as a whole is, that 

 through the operation upon men's minds of the self- 

 denying ordinances and teachings of Jesus, the race 

 must continue to grow ever more and more religious." 

 If these two aphorisms are true — and as far as the 

 human intellect is capable of judging we are entitled 

 to believe so — then there is hope for the world, and 

 its amelioration can be prophesied as a certainty. It 

 is therefore the duty of all social reformers to look 

 forward and consider on what lines the " Ideal State " 

 is to be moulded and what are the processes by means 

 of which it is to be evolved, attention being directed 

 mainly and persistently to the method by which every 

 individual shall be enabled to live that life which shall 

 result in the greatest happiness of all the members of 

 the State, and at the same time allow of the highest 

 physical, intellectual, and spiritual development to 

 him personally. This we know can only be attained 

 under a system of religion which insists as a prime 

 necessity upon a spirit of voluntary self-sacrifice in 

 which it will be the highest pleasure of each to sacri- 

 fice himself for the good of the State as a whole, and 

 of the generations of men, which are to people the 

 earth after his own interest in the affairs of the world 

 are over, and which can in no material way affect his 

 own personality. It has been shown that this has 

 been the power promoting the betterment of the 

 social organism in our Western civilisation up to the 

 present time. It has been slow ; it has taken a 

 thousand years to accomplish the present stage of 

 development, but it is always so — " the mills of God 

 grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small." The 

 lesson of history is that social evolution gains momen- 

 tum with the process of the suns, and we know that 

 recently it has come like a flood, and notwithstanding 



