The brief time we allow ourselves for our utterances ought yet to prove ample for a person of industry and thrift to make himself thoroughly misunderstood; and I hope I have used it to no less purpose on this than on former occasions; but among the misunderstandings I would prevent, if I could, is that which would sum up the matter of my discourse as a defense of _individualism_ against _collectivism_. Such an issue could only be meaningful for one to whom the collectivity was denied some sort of individuality which the “individual” enjoys. But I have tried to show that I could conceive no such difference between the mind of the part and the mind of the group. The group mind may be loved with the human love that individuates, as well as can the soul of a fellow-man; and no doubt one may love one’s country as a mistress. But the difference between the love of equals and the love of constituents is plain. The latter sort of love can last only so long as its object endures, and as long as it lasts its sacrifices are incurable; for in a world that has conquered strife there would no longer be that contradiction between the will of a group and the will of its parts, which alone makes the group entity meaningful. Groups bound in mutual respect of each other and studying to preserve their parts irreplaceable _have no minds_; the entity born of struggle and calling for sacrifice has simply disappeared; where we had a group mind, we have now but an aggregate of minds, “a fluid complex of relations among individuals.” But the love of equals can push on toward the ideal without destroying the very object of its devotion; it can go on searching the core of concord in the stupid appearance of discord until love has found a way to make loyalty a lost virtue and a group mind a thing that is no more. XI RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT When I had gathered together the pages in which for a time I had been living with these men whose thought had been so real a thing to me, who one by one had said their word and left it to live or die according as men’s hearts received it, I was as though suddenly and newly aware of the great modern city without pressing on my window-panes. Little by little its vast insistent presence seemed to push my whilom companions out of the room of being back to their places among the many silent dead. For indeed, I reflected, how few, how vanishingly small a number of those who are out there will be better, worse or different for anything these lives had spent themselves to gain and to give.