disposition out of a possibility of mutual assistance and inspiration; they observe a Rule that springs up and not a Rule imposed.  The more of such groups and Orders we have the better.  I do not see why having formed themselves they should not define and organize themselves.  I believe there is a phase somewhere between fifteen and thirty, in the life of nearly everybody, when such a group is sought, is needed and would be helpful in self-development and self-discovery.  In leagues and societies for specific ends, too, we must all participate.  But the order of the Samurai as a great progressive force controlling a multitude of lives right down to their intimate details and through all the phases of personal development is a thing unrealizable.  To seek to realize it is impatience.  True brotherhood is universal brotherhood.  The way to that is long and toilsome, but it is a way that permits of no such energetic short cuts as this militant order of my dream would achieve.

3.12.  Concerning new starts and new religions.

When one is discussing this possible formation of cults and brotherhoods, it may be well to consider a few of the conditions that rule such human re-groupings.  We live in the world as it is and not in the world as we want it to be, that is the practical rule by which we steer, and in directing our lives we must constantly consider the forces and practicabilities of the social medium in which we move.

In contemporary life the existing ties are so various and so imperative that the detachment necessary as a preliminary condition to such new groupings is rarely found.  This is not a period in which large numbers of people break away easily and completely from old connexions.  Things change less catastrophically than once they did.  More particularly is there less driving out into the wilderness.  There is less heresy hunting; persecution is frequently reluctant and can be evaded by slight concessions.  The world as a whole is less harsh and emphatic than it was.  Customs and customary attitudes change nowadays not so much by open, defiant and revolutionary breaches as by the attrition of partial negligences and new glosses.  Innovating people do conform to current usage, albeit they conform unwillingly and imperfectly.  There is a constant breaking down and building up of usage, and as a consequence a lessened need of wholesale substitutions.  Human methods have become viviparous; the New nowadays lives for a time in the form of the Old.  The friend I quote in Chapter 2.10 writes of a possible sect with a “religious edifice” and ritual of its own, a new religious edifice and a new ritual.  In practice I doubt whether “real” people, people who matter, people who are getting things done and who have already developed complex associations, can afford the extensive re-adjustment implied in such a new grouping.  It would mean too much loss of time, too much loss of energy and attention, too much sacrifice of existing co-operations.