It has been urged, “You are unpracticable; you want a world of tramps—­how are you going to live?” But we no more want a world of tramps than the promiser of new life wants a world of promisers:  we want a world that will take the life promised.

As I have said, we want first of all the few, the hermits, saints, the altogether lovely men and women, the blossoming of the race.  It is necessary that these be found or that they find themselves, and that they take their true orbits and live their true lives; for all the rest of ordinary humanity is waiting to live its life in relation to these.  The few must live their lives out to the full in order that all others may live their lives completely; for the temple of humanity has not only the broad floor, but the Cross glittering above the pinnacle.

The night is dark, but there is plenty of hope for the future; the very extremity of our calamity is something that bids us hope.  Fifty years ago nobody would listen to a gospel of rebellion, and such a great man as Carlyle was actually preaching that to labour is to pray.  To-day men are ready to lay down their working tools and listen to any insurrectionist, so aware has mankind become of an impending spiritual bankruptcy.  Never in any preceding generation has the young man standing on the threshold of life felt more unsettled.  His unsettlement has frequently turned to frenzy and anarchy in individual cases.  Never has he cast his eyes about more desperately for a way of redemption or a spiritual leader.  For him, as for all of us, the one requirement is to find out what is the first thing to do; not the nearest, but the first, the most essential; the one after which all other things naturally take their places.

It is not to wreck the great machine, for that would be to rush to the other extreme of ruin and disorder.  It is not even, as I think, to build a new machine, for that would be to enter into a wasteful competition wherein we should spend without profit and with much loss of brotherly love, all our patience and our new desires.

The one way and the first way is to use and subordinate the present machine, to limit it to its true domain, and let it be our true and vital servant.

But how?

By finding the few who can live the life of communion, the few who can show forth the true significance of the race.  By saving our most precious thoughts and ideals, and adding them to the similar thoughts and ideals of others, by putting the instruments of education in their proper places, by separating and saving in the world of literature and art the expressions of beauty which are valuable to the coming race, as distinguished from those that are merely sold for a price.  By the making solitary, which is making sacred.