The object of all this long labour is, of course, to get some kind of an organism that shall be capable of maintaining itself in a world of ferocious strife; that shall be able to withstand all enemies that may come against it, and all rebellions that may arise within it. The French monarchy was a marvellous piece of work when it was done; it had men graded into a thousand different classes and occupations, and everything fitted perfectly and ran like a clock. It had peasants to till the soil, and soldiers and sailors to fight; artisans to make all its necessaries, and merchants to handle them; and rising tier upon tier, a whole pyramid of governing and administrative officials, up to the king. It had likewise the whole outfit of ideas and customs necessary to its operation; it was complete and perfect and sublime—it was like a mighty vessel defying the tempests; it had also its pennons that waved, and its songs for the crew to sing. Was it any wonder that those who had made it were proud of it, and felt that there was nothing more to be done in the world but to keep it going? And yet evolution was not through with it. Men grow weary and want to rest, they become “conservative” and fret at the bare thought of change—but the processes of life go on inexorably. This mighty structure, the Kingdom of France, was only a means and not an end—its purpose was to bind the people of the nation together and protect them until they were able to take care of themselves. It took a long time for this idea to make its way; it took a fearful struggle—men were imprisoned and exiled, burned and beheaded; but the idea went right on, and the nation went right on; and when the time came, it burst the old integument to pieces, and out of the Kingdom of France there emerged the French Republic. What a marvellous event that was, and what a stir it made in the world—what a stir especially in our own corner of the world—every one knows. Looking at it from a century’s distance, and calmly, we see the whole age-long event as an exemplification of the process of life; the combining of a number of simple things into one complex thing. The means was struggle and rivalry—it was a cruel process; but you will notice that at the end the effort and the pain are all gone—that the organism fulfils its functions freely and joyfully, and that the only difference between the first stage and the last is that the individual man has been raised to a higher plane of being. Now, as I have said before, the first care of a man is to protect his life; the second is to accumulate wealth. A man does not set much store by his goods while his enemies are within sound; but just as soon as they are dispersed, the tribe begins to gather flocks, and to till the soil. And so, following close upon the heels of the evolution of political society, you have the evolution of _industrial_ society.