It has long been recognized that ideas rule the world, and that Power is the translation of ideas into material force, but the real nature of world forces and the elementary laws of their operation have been obscured by superstition and prejudice, and little attempt has been made to recognize their true significance. The great world war has indeed emphasized the immense power of ideas. We hear much of propaganda and ideals. In medicine we hear more of "psychotherapy," or the treatment of disease by persuasive and hypnotic methods. We are aware, too, that our merchants have long known the practical and tangible value of advertisement, that is, the insistent repetition of a coloured statement until it is believed to be true, and that our priests, teachers and politicians have for centuries relied on this method alone. But for the most part these people have little real knowledge or understanding of the power they are using, and of which they are themselves the mere puppets. A supreme illustration is the real impotence of the various belligerent governments to direct or cope with the immeasurable psychic forces now pursuing their cataclysmic course, and their inability to foretell the direction in which they are leading a bewildered world. Nowhere is this more graphically apparent than in Russia, whose kaleidoscopic upheavals have baffled all prophets. I do not suggest that the causal origin of the European War is purely psychic in character, it may with greater certainty be found years before its disastrous developments, in the steadily increasing pressure of population, assisted by the gradual elimination of the natural checks[41] among the indigent and unfit[42] and the proportionate increase in the burdens of the fit, due chiefly to the growth of democratic ideas and trend of religious influences; this pressure found expression in policies of expansion among the more prolific nations, and in the case of Germany, where relief could not adequately be found in colonization, as a natural consequence engendered assiduous military and bellicose propaganda, which was bound eventually to culminate in a world war.