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298 The Ideal of Human Unityalways needed to give greater energy and a more complete shapeto the new thing which is in process of formation. But what weare now tending towards is such an increase of organised Statepower and such a huge, irresistible and complex State activity aswill either eliminate free individual effort altogether or leave itdwarfed and cowed into helplessness. The necessary correctiveto the defects, limitations and inefficiency of the State machinewill disappear.The organised State is neither the best mind of the nationnor is it even the sum of the communal energies. It leaves outof its organised action and suppresses or unduly depresses theworking force and thinking mind of important minorities, oftenof those which represent that which is best in the present andthat which is developing for the future. It is a collective egoismmuch inferior to the best of which the community is capable.What that egoism is in its relation to other collective egoismswe know, and its ugliness has recently been forced upon thevision and the conscience of mankind. The individual has usuallysomething at least like a soul, and at any rate he makes upfor the deficiencies of the soul by a system of morality and anethical sense, and for the deficiencies of these again by the fearof social opinion or, failing that, a fear of the communal lawwhich he has ordinarily either to obey or at least to circumvent;and even the difficulty of circumventing is a check on all exceptthe most violent or the most skilful. But the State is an entitywhich, with the greatest amount of power, is the least hamperedby internal scruples or external checks. It has no soul oronly a rudimentary one. It is a military, political and economicforce; but it is only in a slight and undeveloped degree, if at all,an intellectual and ethical being. And unfortunately the chiefuse it makes of its undeveloped intellect is to blunt by fictions,catchwords and recently by State philosophies, its ill-developedethical conscience. Man within the community is now at leasta half-civilised creature, but his international existence is stillprimitive. Until recently the organised nation in its relationswith other nations was only a huge beast of prey with appetiteswhich sometimes slept when gorged or discouraged by events,