when most people could neither read nor write.  But to-day our best prophets and preachers are laymen.  As at ancient Athens, in the time of Aristophanes, ’the young learn from the schoolmaster, the mature from the poets.’  Similarly, the captain of industry cannot hold the same autocratic position as formerly, in view of the growing intelligence and capacity of the workmen; and the capitalist who is not a captain of industry is a debtor to the community to an extent which he does not always realise.  This class is becoming painfully conscious of its vulnerability.

There are, therefore, irrational survivals in our social order; and though it may be proved that they are not a severe burden on the community, it is natural that popular bitterness and discontent should fasten upon them and exaggerate their evil results.  It cannot be disputed that this bitterness and discontent were becoming very acute in the years before the war.  An increasing number of persons saw no meaning and no value in our civilisation.  This feeling was common in all classes, including the so-called leisured class; and was so strong that many welcomed with joy the clear call to a plain duty, though it was the duty of facing all the horrors of war.  What is the cause of this discontent?  There are few more important questions for us to answer.

Those who find the cause in the existence of the survivals which we have mentioned are certainly mistaken.  It is no new thing that there should be a small class more or less parasitic on the community.  The whole number of persons who pay income-tax on L5000 a year and upwards is only 13,000 out of 46 millions, and their wealth, if it could be divided up, would make no appreciable difference to the working man.  The wage-earners are better off than they have ever been before in our history, and the danger of revolution comes not from the poor, but from the privileged artisans who already have incomes above the family average.  We must look elsewhere for an explanation of social unrest.  If we consider what are the chief centres of discontent throughout the civilised world, we shall find that they are the great aggregations of population in wealthy industrial countries.  Social unrest is a disease of town-life.  Wherever the conditions which create the great modern city exist, we find revolutionary agitation.  It has spread to Barcelona, to Buenos Ayres, and to Osaka, in the wake of the factory.  The inhabitants of the large town do not envy the countryman and would not change with him.  But, unknown to themselves, they are leading an unnatural life, cut off from the kindly and wholesome influences of nature, surrounded by vulgarity and ugliness, with no traditions, no loyalties, no culture, and no religion.  We seldom reflect on the strangeness of the fact that the modern working-man has few or no superstitions.  At other times the masses have evolved for themselves some picturesque nature-religion, some pious ancestor-worship, some cult of saints or