Every locality, then, is, however imperfectly and unconsciously, a body which has a mind. It is, as an idea which enters into us, the spiritual reflection of our adjacent surroundings, both human and natural, as the family is of our animal parentage. The neighbourhood is for the mind its immediate picture of the world, the frame into which its further vista of society as a whole must be fitted, or, in other words, its sphere of direct relations. The family is a group of natural relations; but the neighbourhood consists of relations which are as natural in a different way, not through blood, but through contact. It is not a selection, but rather a specimen of life as a whole, for it must include as a rule _all_ the necessary elements of the social fabric. It includes all that comes to us by direct sense-perception from day to day; all our chance meetings and dealings with those outside our household, and probably the nearer {308} and more reliable illustrations of all social and political problems. For it is a context of life which we know and feel in its total working, which is impossible with what we only gather from writings or from hearsay. As such a reflection of our direct surroundings, it colours our whole basis of feeling, A peculiar tinge of happiness, anxiety, depression, or resolution attaches to the streets or fields which we pass through day by day, and the faces which we meet. How far these feelings are true interpretations of what we see, and how far they spring from superficial or sentimental associations, is one of the greatest tests of the mind and heart. Do we see the body of a soul, the symbols of character and happiness, in the houses, the streets, the tillage, the workshops, or the gardens? No other element of mind can be the substitute for the neighbourhood. It is the faith in which we live, so far as embodied in our contact with a sensuous world. It is a microcosm of humanity, in which, by the very indifference of space, we are liable to the direct impact of all possible factors. It is particularly the sphere of charity and courtesy, of the right behaviour in immediate human relations of all possible kinds. The District or Neighbourhood, in short, as an ethical idea, is the unity of the region with which we are in sensuous contact, as the family is that of the world bound to us by blood or daily needs. Local self-government, for example, acquires a peculiar character from the possibilities of intimate knowledge of each other among those who carry it on. A man’s whole way of living {309} is in question when he sets up to be locally prominent, and though the result may often be corruption or vulgarity, [1] these are only the failure of what, at its best, is a true type of the relation of fellow-citizens. [1] The recriminations or interested intimacies of a vestry or parish council rest at bottom on the personal knowledge which, rightly used, gives security to local life.