I suppose Croce would say that nothing better could be offered in support of a modern fiction than an ancient fable; and I confess that I can think of nothing better fitted to set forth the complex problem of how beings of one mind can combine to form groups of another mind, than Aristotle’s account of the way elements in the form of mechanism combine to produce a group with that other form, life. Perhaps I can make out the connection between old and new ideas by a single example. I know of no fellow easier to get along with than your average Parisian: many a time have I sat at his board, looked in his eyes, listened to his amusing wit and wondered how the great-grandfather of my host could have been part of the Reign of Terror. And yet I suppose the Parisian of today is not very different from the Parisian of four generations ago, when groups of these same Parisians were ranging the streets of Paris crying, “A la lanterne!” However much it was in the character of the Pierre, Paul, Jean and Jacques Bonhomme of those old days to steer for home, their distributive tendency was contradicted by their collective tendency. A new form, a new entity had appeared; it was the spirit of the mob. It may be pleasant to call such new entities fictions; but it would be a most dangerous fiction to suppose pleasant men made pleasant mobs. I must let this single illustration take the place of what might at some other time grow into a systematic account of the varieties of group minds that history and personal experience reveal to us. For my world is highly organized--groups within groups and groups within these in a way one might have learned at the feet of Nicolaus or by gathering one’s history from Gierke’s “Geschichte des Deutschen Rechts.” But on this occasion, instead of going into all this literature and all this philosophy, let me come back to the matter of loyalty’s worth. There would be no such thing as a demand for loyalty were there no call for a man to deny his wish for home--whether home be on earth or on high for him--for the sake of organizing himself into a group; which means, as we have seen, sacrificing his purpose for the group purpose. Now, what you think of the value of this sacrifice depends altogether on the esteem in which you hold group minds. If you can find some principle on which to estimate their dignity as something worth dying for in part or altogether, then loyalty may be the last word of virtue. But if you find that at their very best there is something rather primitive, sometimes amoeboid, sometimes tigerish about such minds, then you should seriously consider whether your biped soul owes anything more to this polypod entity than the entity owes to it. Merging oneself into something big may not be just the same as reaching for something high. * * * * *