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He is not concerned with altering the course of these streams or inabolishing the force but rather with harnessing its power to his ownconquest of power. The reformer or philosopher busies himself withoutlining projects that run counter to these streams. He wants tochange the topography of the country and create new currents runningin different directions. This is why his task is so difficult, indeedin any short period impossible, and why he never or seldom comesto power and why the practical politician, instead, takes powerwhen finally, after generations of teaching and exposition and provingby the reformer, the streams of interest and desire begin to runin a new direction. It is chiefly in this that we find the failure of thesocialist movement. It ran against all the existing streams, againstevery vested opinion and interest. It could win great numbers ofintellectual supporters and sympathizers but never enough voters.But it would not be true to say that over the years the socialistmovement did not finally set up new and powerful streams ofthought and appetite which the practical politicians were forcedto see and to use. The politician seeking out and using for his ownpurposes these great streams of interest and desire is irresistible saveagainst another politician who is more successful in locating thesecurrents and harnessing them.It is not true, however, that this condition makes the futurehopeless save as men surrender helplessly to these powerful psychiccurrents, however sordid or unreasoning. It is not true, as Spenglersays, that these mass units are not susceptible to reason. Many ofthem are created out of the material or economic needs or interestsof the individuals who compose them and this is on a level where,not always but sometimes and, in the end, perhaps always, men canbe made to see where their interests lie. The hope of the presentcrisis lies partly in this. And it lies also in the fact that all streamsdo not run in the same direction. Nor does it even follow thatthese forces are necessarily moving in the wrong direction and itis possible to make those who compose them see after a while thatthe leaders who are shouting with them and whipping them on arenot necessarily serving their ends. It is possible for men of soundsense, as well as unscrupulous politicians and brainless Utopians, torun with these streams. And intervals of sober re-examination by158