Now it is this dream of paradise, or ideal society, which deserves analytical study. Why does it always appear the minute a crowd is sufficiently powerful to dream of world-power? It will readily be conceded that this dream has some function in creating certain really desirable social values. But such values cannot be the psychogenesis of the dream. If the dream were ever realized, I think William James was correct in saying that we should find it to be but a "sheep's heaven and lubberland of joy," and that life in it would be so "mawkish and dishwatery" that we should gladly return to this world of struggle and challenge, or anywhere else, if only to escape the deadly inanity. We have already noted the fact that this dream has the function of justifying the crowd in its revolt and will to rule. But this is by no means all. The social idealism has well been called a dream, for that is just what it is, the daydream of the ages. It is like belief in fairies, or the Cinderella myth. It is the Jack-and-the-beanstalk philosophy. The dream has exactly the same function as the Absolute, and the ideal world-systems of the paranoiac; _it is an imaginary refuge from the real_. Like all other dreams, it is the realization of a wish. I have long been impressed with the static character of this dream; not only is it much the same in all ages, but it is always regarded as the great culmination beyond which the imagination cannot stretch. Even those who hold the evolutionary view of reality and know well that life is continuous change, and that progress cannot be fixed in any passing moment, however sweet, are generally unable to imagine progress going on after the establishment of the ideal society and leaving it behind.