3.16.  A comment.

The preceding section has been criticized by a friend who writes:—­

“In religious matters apparent assent produces false unanimity.  There is no convention about these things; if there were they would not exist.  On the contrary, the only way to get perfunctory tests and so forth abrogated, is for a sufficient number of people to refuse to take them.  It is in this case as in every other; secession is the beginning of a new integration.  The living elements leave the dead or dying form and gradually create in virtue of their own combinations a new form more suited to present things.  There is a formative, a creative power in sincerity and also in segregation itself.  And the new form, the new species produced by variation and segregation will measure itself and its qualities with the old one.  The old one will either go to the wall, accept the new one and be renewed by it, or the new one will itself be pushed out of existence if the old one has more vitality and is better adapted to the circumstances.  This process of variation, competition and selection, also of intermarriage between equally vital and equally adapted varieties, is after all the process by which not only races exist but all human thoughts.”

So my friend, who I think is altogether too strongly swayed by biological analogies.  But I am thinking not of the assertion of opinions primarily but of co-operation with an organization with which, save for the matter of the test, one may agree.  Secession may not involve the development of a new and better moral organization; it may simply mean the suicide of one’s public aspect.  There may be no room or no need of a rival organization.  To secede from State employment, for example, is not to create the beginnings of a new State, however many—­short of a revolution—­may secede with you.  It is to become a disconnected private person, and throw up one’s social side.

3.17.  War.

I do not think a discussion of man’s social relations can be considered at all complete or satisfactory until we have gone into the question of military service.  To-day, in an increasing number of countries, military service is an essential part of citizenship and the prospect of war lies like a great shadow across the whole bright complex prospect of human affairs.  What should be the attitude of a right-living man towards his State at war and to warlike preparations?

In no other connexion are the confusions and uncertainty of the contemporary mind more manifest.  It is an odd contradiction that in Great Britain and Western Europe generally, just those parties that stand most distinctly for personal devotion to the State in economic matters, the Socialist and Socialistic parties, are most opposed to the idea of military service, and just those parties that defend individual self-seeking and social disloyalty in the sphere of property are most urgent for conscription.  No doubt some of