A true social organism is thus being created with common human and economic interests, and the clan feeling, which was so powerful an influence in early and mediæval civilisations, with all its power of generating passionate loyalties, is born anew in the modern world. Our ancient Irish records show little clans with a common ownership of land hardly larger than a parish, but with all the patriotic feeling of large nations held with an intensity rare in our modern states. The history of these clans and of very small nations like the ancient Greek states shows that the social feeling assumes its most binding and powerful character where the community is large enough to allow free play to the various interests of human life, but is not so large that it becomes an abstraction to the imagination. Most of us feel no greater thrill in being one of a State with fifty million inhabitants than we do in recognising we are citizens of the solar system. The rural commune and the very small States exhibit the feeling of human solidarity in its most intense manifestations, working on itself, regenerating itself and seeking its own perfection. Combinations of agriculturists, when the rural organisation is complete, re-create in a new way the conditions where these social instincts germinate best, and it is only by this complete organisation of rural life that we can hope to build up a rural civilisation, and create those counter-attractions to urban life which will stay the exodus from the land. I do not wish to exaggerate the interest which the rural life of my own little island may have for those who are concerned for the vast and wealthy expanses of the American farm lands. But, even here there is a genuine desire for the really simple life, which in its commonest manifestation is a thing that rather simple people talk about. In a properly organised rural neighbourhood could be developed that higher kind of attraction which is suggested by the very word _neighbourhood_. Once get the farmers and their families all working together at something that concerns them all, and we have the beginning of a more stable and a more social community than is likely to exist amid the constant change and bustle of the large towns, where indeed some thinkers tell us that not only the family, but also the social life, is badly breaking down. When people are really interested in each other--and this interest comes of habitually working together--the smallest personal traits or events affecting one are of interest to all. The simplest piece of amateur acting or singing, done in the village hall by one of the villagers, will arouse more criticism and more enthusiasm among his friends and neighbours than can be excited by the most consummate performance of a professional in a great city theatre, where no one in the audience knows or cares for the performer.