THE 0R6ANIZED LOVE-KINGDOM 4S

throughout sodety by individuak and gnmps, — by saints, heroes, reformers, savioors, lovers, xmrses, sisters of mercy, religieux, quiet Idndly folk, and ail nûnistering spirits; ty churches, philanthropie organizations, sdentific move> mentâ, législative enactments, hospitals, crèches, reformatories, cantines nuUemelles, infant care, Personal service, sympathetic strikes, old-age pensicms, — are not fragmentary and unrelated spasms (more or less prolonged) of love, dépendent entirely upon the aithusiasm of the private heart; no more unrelated are they than différent water-jets, fountains, well-springs, and riversources are unrelated which ail arise from the same subterranean réservoir ; they are simply the more obviously protruding points of the more perfect society which is being preformed within the less perfect ; they reveal a " body within the body," and the greater part of that inner body — the true Democracy — ^is invisible, deeply-lying, subtly pervasive, r^y to appear at unexpected places, and slowly being strengthened and fashioned from within. It announces also that the ultimately availing power does not neces» sarily lie with the things which, at any particular moment, may hâve the sceptre of authority; that the real strength is not with the things which fill the largest space in the world, " take the eye and hâve the price " ; that it is both natiural and inévitable that the inner should triumph over and supersede the outer ; and that

44 SOCIAL ORGANIZATION PROTECTIVE

the iûward spiritual kingdom must liberate itself just as surely, and triumph gloriously over the world-kingdoms, whatsoever they may be, as the imago must at last ascend out of the shattered and discarded cerements of the larva.

It announces further — and not least welcome of ail — that the larva is in no sensé the enemy of the imago ; it bounds it close, Ues upon it lîke a grave-cloth, is round it like a confine ; but this which looks like imprisonment is really protection. The imago's chance of perfection lies in this pressure and imprisonment of larval drcumstance. So did the grossness, thickness, opaqueness of the sub-human ordér lie round the germinal human society as a protective covering rather than as an impeding limitation ; its walls were the walls of a womb, not of a tomb. Even so — though it requires a visionary to see it — the grosser and more camal éléments in human society, the things conmaonly spoken of as wrong and evil, the things we antagonize and strive to break down, the earthier heavier oppressive crust, the lower viler body, are but the encasement which lies round the as yet unformed higher organism; they call for a résistance, in the offering of which the inner Body becomes more and more compact together; we fight against them, not simply because it would be better that they should not be there, but in order that we may be able to stand the firmer when they shall be ovçrcome,