account.  So far as a people live a simple and relatively undifferentiated life, all sharing in much the same kind of pursuits, and enjoying much the same grade of life,—­such as prevailed in a large measure in the earlier times, and decreasingly as society has become industrial,—­and so far also as the new acquirements of thought are transformed into practical life and common language, all the members of the community share these acquirements in fairly equal measure.  So far, however, as the communal profits consist of more or less abstract ideas, embodied in religious and philosophic thought, and stored away in books and literature accessible only to scholars, they are distributed very unequally.  The more highly developed and consequently differentiated the society, the more difficult does distribution become.  The very structure of the highly differentiated communal organism forbids the equal distribution of these goods.  The literary and ruling minority have exclusive access to the treasures.  The industrial majority are more and more rigidly excluded from them.  Thus, although it is strictly true that every advance in the communal principle accrues to the benefit of the individual, it is not true that such advance necessarily accrues to the benefit of every individual, or equally to all individuals.  In its lowest stages, developing communalism lifts all its individual members to about the same level of mental and moral acquirement.  In its middle stages it develops all individuals to a certain degree, and certain individuals to a high degree.  In its highest stages it develops among all its members a uniformly high grade of personal worth and acquirement.

Now the great problem on whose solution depends the possibility of continued communal evolution is, from this view-point, the problem of distributing the gains of the community to all its members more and more equally.  It is the problem of giving to each human unit all the best and truest thought and character, all the highest and noblest ideals and motives, which the most advanced individuals have secured.  If we stop to inquire minutely and analytically just what is the nature of the greatest attainments made by the community, we discover that it is not the possession of wealth in land or gold, it is not the accident of social rank, it is not any incident of temporal happiness or physical ease of life.  It consists, on the contrary, in the discovery of the real nature of man.  He is no mere animal, living in the realm of things and pleasures, limited by the now and the here.  He is a person, a rational being.  His thoughts and desires can only be expressed in terms of infinity.  Nothing short of the infinite can satisfy either his reason or his heart Though living in nature and dependent on it, he is above it, and may and should understand it and rule it.  His thoughts embrace all time and all being.  In a very real sense he lives an infinite and eternal life, even here in this passing world.