Here, given tentatively, with many evident faults and gaps, is a scheme for all human conduct. It discusses what should man be doing and what should men be doing. It states a general form and direction for the crowding rush of modern ideas and impulsions. I believe that upon such lines as I have drawn, the creative forces in our species can be organised and may be organised, in a comprehensive fight against individual and collective frustration and death. I believe also that there is no other direction but this direction along which mankind can escape from the insecurity of an animal which has been evolved and which may presently be degraded or extinguished in the play of material things. The accident of a great opportunity, I hold, has happened to our kind. It is opportunity and not destiny we face. So I bear my witness and argue my design. This is, I declare, the truth and the way of salvation. If I could, I would put this book before every mind in the world. I would say, tell me where this is wrong, or tell me why you do not live after these principles. I pray the reader for a patient reading. This is, I submit, matter of very great moment to him. My phrasing, my idiom of thought may not be his. Will he forgive that for the sake of the substance I am putting before him? It is astir already in many intelligences and it is an amplifying group of ideas. I am merely the observer who notes his own adhesion and draws attention, eagerly and earnestly, to what is going on and to the quality of our present occasion. Will the reader at least try to understand before he refutes? I am discussing here the possibility of an immense and hopeful revolution in human affairs and of an enlivening and ennobling change in our lives. I am discussing whether our species, he and I with it and part of it, is to live or die. CONTENTS Preface _p._ vii Ch. I. Necessity of Religion to Human Life 1 II. Subordination of Self the Essence of Religion 8 III. Need for a Restatement of Religion 11 IV. Objective Expression of Modern Religion 20 V. The Frame of the Task before Mankind: The World Commonweal 27 VI. Broad Characteristics of the World Commonweal 32 VII. No Stable Utopia Is Contemplated 55 VIII. The Open Conspiracy Must Be Heterogeneous 57 IX. Forces and Resistances in the Great Modern Communities Now Prevalent, Which Will Be Antagonistic to the Open Conspiracy 68 X. The Open Conspiracy and the Resistances of the Less Industrialised Peoples 95 XI. Resistances and Antagonistic Forces in Ourselves 112 XII. The Open Conspiracy Must begin as a Movement of Explanation and Propaganda 126