evolution which man is undergoing is, over and above everything else, a social evolution. There is, therefore, but one absolute test of superiority. It is only the race possessing in the highest degree the qualities contributing to social efficiency that can be recognised as having any claim to superiority.

But these qualities are not as a rule of the brilliant order, nor such as strike the imagination. Occupying a high place amongst them are such characteristics as strength and energy of character, humanity, probity and integrity, and simple-minded devotion to conceptions of duty in such circumstances as may arise. Those who incline to attribute the very wide influence which the English-speaking peoples have come to exercise in the world to the Machiavelian schemes of their rulers are often very wide of the truth. This influence is, to a large extent, due to qualities not at all of a showy character. It is, for instance, a fact of more than superficial significance, and one worth remembering, that in the South American Republics, where the British peoples move amongst a mixed crowd of many nationalities, the quality which has come to be accepted as distinctive of them is simply "the word of an Englishman." In like manner it is qualities such as humanity, strength, and uprightness of character, and devotion to the immediate calls of duty without thought of brilliant ends and ideal results, which have largely contributed to render English rule in India successful when similar experiments elsewhere have been disastrous. It is to the exercise of qualities of this class that we must also chiefly attribute the success which has so far attended the political experiment of extraordinary difficulty which England has undertaken in Egypt. And it is upon just the same qualities, and not upon any ideal schemes for solving the social problem, that we must depend to carry us safely through the social revolution which will be upon us in the twentieth century, and which will put to the most severe test which it has yet had to endure, the social efficiency of the various sections of the Western peoples.

It must be noticed that the conclusion here emphasised is the same towards which the historian with the methods hitherto at his command has been already slowly feeling his way. Said Mr. Lecky recently, speaking of the prosperity of nations, and the causes thereof as indicated by history : "Its foundation is laid in pure domestic life, in commercial integrity, in a high standard of moral worth and of public spirit, in simple habits, in courage, uprightness, and a certain soundness and moderation of judgment which springs quite as much from character as from intellect. If you would form a wise judgment of the future of a nation, observe carefully whether these qualities are increasing or decaying. Observe especially what qualities count for most in public life. Is character becoming of greater or less importance? Are the men who obtain the highest posts in the nation, men of whom in private life and irrespective of party competent judges speak with genuine respect? Are they of sincere convictions, consistent lives, indisputable integrity? It is by observing this moral current that you can best cast the horoscope of a nation." 1

This is the utterance of that department of knowledge which, sooner or later, when its true foundations are perceived, must become the greatest of all the sciences. It is but the still small voice which anticipates the verdict which will be pronounced with larger knowledge, 1 The Political Value of History, by W. E. H. Lecky.

and in more emphatic terms, by evolutionary science, when at no distant date it must enable us, as we have never been enabled before, "to look beyond the smoke and turmoil of our petty quarrels, and to detect, in the slow developments of the past, the great permanent forces that are steadily bearing nations onward to improvement or decay."

The fuller light in which we are thus able to view the great fundamental problems of human society cannot be without a strengthening and steadying influence on character. We see that, under all the complex appearances our Western civilisation presents, the central process working itself out in our midst is one which is ever tending to bring, for the first time in the history of the race, all the people into the competition of life on a footing of equality of opportunity. In this process the problem, with which society and legislators will be concerned for long into the future, will be how to secure to the fullest degree these conditions of equality, while at the same time retaining that degree of inequality which must result from offering prizes sufficiently attractive to keep up within the community that state of stress and exertion, without which no people can long continue in a high state of social efficiency. For in the vast process of change in progress it is always the conditions of social efficiency, and not those which individuals or classes may desire for themselves, that the unseen evolutionary forces at work amongst us are engaged in developing. It is by the standard of social efficiency that we as individuals are ever being tested. It is in this quality of social efficiency that nations and peoples are being continually, and for the most part unconsciously, pitted against each other in the complex rivalry of life. And it is in those sections of the race where, for the time being, this quality obtains the highest development, that we have present all the conditions favourable to success and ascendency.

Nor is there any reason why the great social development proceeding in our civilisation which has been but feebly and inadequately described in the preceding chapters, should be viewed with distrust by those of more conservative instincts amongst us who profess to have at heart the highest interests of humanity. The movement which is uplifting the people-necessarily to a large extent at the expense of those above them is but the final result of a long process of organic development. All anticipations and forebodings as to the future of the incoming democracy, founded upon comparisions with the past, are unreliable or worthless. For the world has never before witnessed a democracy of the kind that is now slowly assuming supreme power amongst the Western peoples. To compare it with democracies which held power under the ancient empires is to altogether misunderstand both the nature of our civilisation and the character of the forces that have produced it. Neither in form nor in spirit have we anything in common with the democracies of the past. Great as has been the progress in outward forms, the more important difference lies far deeper. The gradual emancipation of the people and their rise to supreme power has been in our case the product of a slow ethical development in which character has been profoundly influenced, and in which conceptions of equality and of responsibility to each other have obtained a hold on the general mind hitherto unparalleled. The fact of our time which overshadows all others is the arrival of Democracy. But the perception of the fact is of relatively little importance if we do not also realise that it is a new Democracy. There are many who speak of the new ruler of nations as if he were the same idle Demos whose ears the dishonest courtiers have tickled from time immemorial. It is not so. Even those who attempt to lead him do not yet quite understand him. Those who think that he is about to bring chaos instead of order, do not rightly apprehend the nature of his strength. They do not perceive that his arrival is the crowning result of an ethical movement in which qualities and attributes which we have been all taught to regard as the very highest of which human nature is capable, find the completest expression they have ever reached in the history of the race.