We draw from all these things some subtle ingredient without which our natures are weakened so that a further strain sends them awry. To-day we are so deeply involved with the hydra-headed monster of the revolutionary spirit that there does not seem time to deal with it radically, to attempt to understand it, and consequently to conquer it for ever. Even now, when for the first time humanity is on a large scale beginning to tackle fundamental problems, I have seen no indication that the source of revolution is being sought for in the right place. What is the source of revolution? The revolutionaries through the ages, feeling themselves jar with their surroundings, have been ensnared by the nearest obvious things, the happier surrounding of others. These they have endeavoured to snatch at and destroy, thinking thereby to improve their own and their comrades’ lot. Their deductions, though profoundly false, have appeared even obviously right to many. External grievances are what the revolutionary is out to avenge: external benefits are what he is out to gain. Generally this is expressed in terms of higher wages, a share, or all, of the capital of those supposed to be better off, or the material possessions of others. These are the things that nearly all strikers and revolutionaries are upsetting the world to get, thinking--perhaps sincerely--that these things will give them the happiness for which, consciously or unconsciously, they yearn. The truth is, however, that it is a much more intimate thing than money or possessions which they need. They need new bodies and new hearts. Most of the revolutionaries I have met are people who have been warped or stunted in their own personal growth. One sees upon their minds or bodies the marks and scars of dwarfing, stunting or lack of balance. They have known wretchedness both in themselves and in their families far more intimate and penetrating than that of mere poverty. That, they may answer, is an external grievance which has been imposed upon them by society. In effect they say: “Society has starved us, given us bad conditions.” Thus they foster a grievance against “society” in their minds. One bitter leader said to me:-- I was one of fourteen children, and my mother had only a little three-roomed cottage near Glasgow. We nearly starved when I was young. I know what the poor suffer at the hands of society. But it was not society that put fourteen children into that cottage; it was the mother herself. Her own ignorance, helpless ignorance perhaps, was the source of her children’s misery. The most for which society can be blamed concerning that family is in tolerating such a plague-spot of ignorance in its midst. Nor is this pestilential ignorance by any means only confined to the financially poor.