But it is an ideal which must obviously depend for its realisation on the moral and rational development of men. It cannot come till men and the times are ripe for it. No doubt the realisation of it may be hindered by evil institutions and reactionary Governments; yet these, too, are merely the outcome of such human nature as was once prevalent in the countries where we now find them. They have outlived their time. We are certainly right to get rid of them, as of other evil habits and conditions of the past, but it is best done when done wisely and reasonably. And it cannot be done in any wise or effectual manner except through a wide organic change in the human beings concerned. A moral and rational freedom is therefore the goal of the social development of the world, and it is a goal towards which we must strive even now. But it is a goal that lies far ahead of us. For the present, and in the future with which we have any practical concern, society cannot be maintained without adequate laws, sanctioned and enforced by a regular Government. The elimination of the baser elements from human character and human society proceeds with most regrettable slowness. In the meantime, therefore, we must hold them in check by the best available methods. We may improve our laws, our police, and magistrates, but we cannot do without them. * * * * * It is an interesting fact that socialism has taken its most aggressive form in that European country whose civilisation is most recent. The revolutionary opinions of Russia are not the growth of the soil, and are not the natural and normal outcome of its own social development: they have been imported from abroad. Falling on youthful and enthusiastic temperaments which had not previously been inoculated with the principle of innovation, the new ideas have broken forth with an irrepressible and uncompromising vigour which has astonished the older nations of Europe. Another peculiarity of the situation is that the Government is an autocracy served or controlled by a camarilla which has often been largely foreign both in origin and sympathy. In this case, then, we have a revolutionary party inspired by the socialism of Western Europe fighting against a Government which is also in many ways an exotic, and is not rooted in the mass of the people. The history of Russia turns on two great institutions, the Tzardom and the mir. The Tzardom is the organ of Russian political life, while the mir is the social form taken by the agricultural population, and is the economic basis of the nation generally.