The source of that bewilderment lies, I think, in the attempt to ascribe organic unity and purpose to society. We have been taught to think of society as a body, with a mind, a soul and a purpose, not as a collection of men, women and children whose minds, souls and purposes are variously related. Instead of being allowed to think realistically of a complex of social _relations_, we have had foisted upon us by various great propagative movements the notion of a mythical entity, called Society, the Nation, the Community. In the course of the nineteenth century society was personified under the influence largely of the nationalist and the socialist movements. Each of these doctrinal influences in its own way insisted upon treating the public as the agent of an overmastering social purpose. In point of fact, the real agents were the nationalist leaders and their lieutenants, the social reformers and their lieutenants. But they moved behind a veil of imagery. And the public was habituated to think that any one conforming to the stereotype of nationalism or of social welfare was entitled to support. What the nationalist rulers thought and did was the nation’s purpose, and the touchstone for all patriots; what the reformers proposed was the benevolent consciousness of the human race moving mysteriously but progressively toward perfection. The deception was so generally practised that it was often practised sincerely. But to maintain the fiction that their purposes were the spirit of mankind, public men had to accustom themselves to telling the public only a part of what they told themselves. And, incidentally, they confessed to themselves only a part of the truth on which they were acting. Candor in public life became a question of policy and not a rule of life. “He may judge rightly,” Mr. Keynes once said of Mr. Lloyd George,[27] “that this is the best of which a democracy is capable,—to be jockeyed, humbugged, cajoled along the right road. A prejudice for truth or for sincerity as a method may be a prejudice based on some æsthetic or personal standard inconsistent, in politics, with practical good. We cannot yet tell.”