It is not necessary to extend this discussion into further detail since we are concerned only to indicate a direction rather than to describe a finished product. It may, moreover, be justly questioned whether the business of government can range to any fruitful purpose beyond the common economic, hygienic and educational concerns of the community, and such derivative and concomitant operations as they require for their effectual conduct. In any case it would appear that the remaining interests of life abut on the legitimate province of government only at minor and somewhat special points. These particular interests are for the most part of the “spiritual” order—religious and cultural; and from the nature of the case it were best to leave them to go their own way in peace so long as they may not equitably be charged with encroaching upon the general welfare. Such matters as the property of a religious society or an author’s copyright represent the kind of point at which the spiritual interests come into some sort of relation with the state; and these are essentially matters in the state-regulation of which the chief care should be to avoid anything that may interfere with independence and freedom of thought. For when all is said and done, it is in this particular region that we must look for the actual and characteristic fruits of a democratic order. The real wealth of a community consists in the capacity it possesses and acquires for activity of a creative kind; its true riches are “the riches of the mind.” And in a sense we may say that the business of government is to set the house-keeping machinery moving so smoothly and efficiently that there will be real wayleave for the spiritual business of life. Just as the best physical condition of a man is that in which he is least aware of his body, so the best government is that which makes the governed least conscious of its operation. Here as elsewhere, _magna ars celare artem_. But is there any guarantee that such a state-organisation as is here pleaded for will be any more friendly to freedom of thought than the existing type? So far as the traditional state is concerned, it regards freedom of thought largely as a concession which is not quite congruous with the postulates upon which it habitually acts. Freedom of thought has been wrested from the state by main force; and then only with the understood proviso that the state is empowered on due occasion to withdraw the concession. The habit of free thought has however become so ingrained in the idea of democratic progress that there is now only one due occasion on which the state can interfere with it with any prospect of success—that is, in the event of war. Still from the standpoint of the state, freedom of thought is a regrettable, though, as things are, unavoidable defect in its machinery. It interferes sadly with the uniformitarian programme of the typical governmental mind. But this grudging toleration of freedom of thought is