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636 War and Self-Determinationto which that which is greatest in us will never consent, —and man cannot build greatly whether in art or life, unless hecan conceive an idea and form of perfection and, conceiving,believe in his power to achieve it out of however rebelliousand unductile a stuff of nature. Deprive him of this faith inhis power for perfection and you slay or maim his greatestcreative or self-creative faculty. In the absence then of anyimmediate practicability of that higher and profounder dreamof a spiritually united and perfected humanity, the dream ofsocial and political meliorism may be accepted as the strongestavailable incentive to keep humanity going forward. It is betterthat it should have the ideal of a saving machinery than thatit should have no ideal at all, no figure of a larger, better andsweeter life.This secular dream of a future golden or half-golden ageof a more perfected, rational and peacefully cooperative societyhas taken recently a singular step forward in the effectuatingimagination of mankind and even got as far as some attempt ata first step towards actual effectuation. In ideal and imaginationit has assumed the form of a political and economic society ofthe nations which will get rid of the cruel and devastating deviceof war, establish a reign of international law and order and solvewithout clash, strife or collision, by reason, by cooperation, byarbitration, by mutual accommodation all the more dangerousproblems which still disturb or imperil the comfortable peace,amity and organised productiveness which should be the reasonablestate of mankind. International peace, an ordered legalityand arrangement of the world’s affairs, a guaranteed liberty,— or for the unfit a preparation and schooling for liberty, —an organised unity of the life of the race, this is the figure ofthe golden age which we are now promised. At the first sightone has some sense of a lacuna somewhere, a suspicion of aperfection too external and too well-regulated by clockworkand a timidly insistent idea that it may perhaps be neitherso readily feasible nor so lyrically enchanting as its prophetspretend. One may be disposed to ask, what of the spirit andsoul of man, the greatness of the inner perfection which can