For the most part the second method has been indefatigably used. In the political state the partisans make a great show of the gulf which separates the political party in power from that which is outside, and every other interest in life is supposed to be secondary to this abysmal cleavage. In relatively crude communities, like the United States and Ireland, these differences seem to be taken by the great mass of people at their face value; whereas in England, which at least has the virtues of disillusion, it is the great tradition of Parliament that all the animosities of the floor are ignored in the bar of the House of Commons, while all the congenialities and convivialities that bind men together are emphasized. Lest I be accused of prejudice where none exists, let me add that in the most substantial reconstruction movement that Ireland possesses--I refer to agricultural co-operation as promoted by Sir Horace Plunkett and A. E.--the horizontal interests which bind men together as farmers and members of a local community are successfully emphasized to the exclusion of irrelevant vertical differences, at least in matters touching the organization and conduct of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society; and that, as far as I can see, this single organization has done more to promote the good life in Ireland than any other institution, with the possible exception of the equally non-partisan literary association which grew up in Dublin under the leadership of A. E., William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, and the rest of that fine and glorious crew. Obviously, it is not altogether for nothing that men have joined together in vertical organizations which are as broad as a continent, let us say, or the European world. There is a sense in which the Christians of Jerusalem have more in common with the Christians of Rome than they have with the Jews and Mohammedans of their local region. In the same way, I find myself more deeply drawn to certain friends of mine in Bombay and London than I am towards my next door neighbor, with whom the only recognizable bond is our common animus against a rapacious landlord. So long as the vertical affiliation with people of the same views in politics or religion or philosophy is a spiritual affiliation a great deal of good may come out of it. When, however, the things that draw people together as members of a vertical group are used as a means of inflicting similar opinions or practices upon the local community, without respect to its regional qualities, the results are little less than disastrous. The rain falls on the just and the unjust; more than that, the food that we grow, the houses that we build, the roads that we lay down, the thoughts that we think, belong to us as members of the human species who have inherited the earth and the fullness thereof; and it is absurd to let differences in our idola prevent us from participating equally in this common heritage.