XIII. Early Constructive Work of the Open Conspiracy 144 XIV. Existing and Developing Movements with Which the Open Conspiracy May Hope to Coalesce 164 XV. The Creative Home, Social Group and School: The Present Waste of Youthful Seriousness 178 XVI. Progressive Development of the Activities of the Open Conspiracy into a World Control and Commonweal: The Hazards of the Conflict 185 XVII. The World Community 194 Marginal Note 197 THE OPEN CONSPIRACY _Chapter I_ NECESSITY OF RELIGION TO HUMAN LIFE Few people, if any, are always sustained by unselfish or religious motives, and few or none are altogether beyond their influence. The daily lives of the great majority of human beings are frankly irreligious; they seem to differ only in their scope, variety and intelligence from the lives of animals; they are determined by instinctive impulses, individual desires and personal ends; they pass from one satisfaction or disappointment to another; they are attracted and deflected by casual encounters; they forget more or less completely and they resume. Nevertheless, the conduct of most lives is restricted and defined by the prevalent conceptions of what is honourable and becoming, and right and wrong. Although the lives of the great run of people are neither moral essentially nor essentially religious, they respect current moral and religious forms and maxims, just as they conform to current usages and beaten tracks. It is the line of least resistance for them, and that suffices. Communities have been held together in the past and are still held together by laws and moral codes systematised upon religious ideas, and this although few people have more than a superficial apprehension of such ideas. Religion in its completeness has always been the peculiarity of a minority; it has shaped and innervated communities but never pervaded them throughout. But its presence seems to have been necessary for collective life. Without it morality was baseless and law unjustifiable. The intermittent disposition of most human beings towards some sort of righteousness beyond self-seeking has been upheld, as some sprawling, weak-jointed climbing plant may be upheld on a trellis, by that more steadfast minority of sincere and devoted persons. It is these latter who have preserved disinterested standards, and who still preserve them; who have been and who continue to be the salt of the earth.