But disinterestedness and “the emotion of the ideal,” while they are essential to any kind of healthy social existence afford but slender foundation for a positive social policy. No moral attitude or emotion will carry us far except it be evoked by an ideal which can dramatise itself in terms of a more or less achievable undertaking. We are therefore compelled to relinquish the hope of a definition of absolute social ends, and must be content with something more modest and manageable. We may at least attempt to indicate certain proximate social aims. Even if we cannot hopefully describe the ultimate goal of life, we may reasonably endeavour to answer the question—What do we want our social organisation to produce? Just what results are we to aim at? That some such discussion as this is involved in any fruitful handling of the question of social integration is clear from the fact that the conception of an aim is either implicit or explicit in all attempts to formulate a social polity ever since Aristotle defined the aim of the Republic as the promotion of the good life. But this definition, like Mill’s “greatest good of the greatest number” raises further questions—What is the nature of the good? What is the characteristic note and quality of the good life? This indeed takes us to the very centre of our problem; for at last the controversy between the militarist and the pacifist, the protectionist and the free-trader, the authoritarian and the libertarian, springs from differing conceptions of the good life. This is not to say that either party has worked out a reasoned conviction on the point. Both appear to start from certain instinctive acceptances, determined largely by temperamental variations,—which points to the need of a rigorously rationalistic exploration of this entire region. Mr. Graham Wallace speaks of “the organisation of happiness”; but as he himself perceives, he is speaking in paradox. It seems in any case improbable that our social aims can be defined in terms of an emotional state. III