Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/102

82 them is anything but a vast system of adulteration?—which may perhaps be thus expressed:—Two great bodies of opinion trying to misunderstand each other and trying to make the general public share in their misunderstanding, in order that their own side may attain to power.

When you start on a discussion, what is the pure reason for that discussion? To try to arrive at a common understanding—mental co-operation. But is it for that purpose that we raise our party cries and run a general election?

We are being threatened with that great boon in the near future. And when it takes place a great wave of impurity will rise and will flood through the land; and men will be strenuously misrepresenting the words and thoughts and motives of their opponents—and very often men will be misrepresenting their own motives—because their end is really power—power over others instead of goodwill to others. And out of that process we shall draw together the Council of the Nation!

That process—which we see quite well is an impure process—is forced upon us because we are in a stage of transition; it is difficult as a matter of practical politics to suggest a better.

But ought not that obvious fact to make us very humble about our present stage of political development—and humble in general about the position to which we have attained in our moral evolution? Is it not a little