Mind in its turn grasps and intensifies more and
more of Life. There follows in the polity, therefore,
increase of the brood-care which we call education ;

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THE GROWTH OF THE GREAT STATE

increases of self-guidance and group wisdom ; and,
since the very principle of Mind is diffusion, there
is an increase in the range of the external structure of
polity. Man does not invent the State only to satisfy
the impulse of the Family. He feels the impulse
because his natural destination is the State, as Aris-
totle implied. This majestic process thrusting up
from some source unknown (but whose unity we
fragmentarily apprehend), more and more numerous
centres of nerve-consciousness to the surface of the
globe, appears to be the expansion of some pro-
found and universal root of Self-dominion.
This is the open secret of the world.
IV

In this process the Life-centre and the Mind-
centre in any polity are not allowed by the omnipo-
tential principle to fall far apart. Where they do
not interact the polity-forming current ceases, a light
vanishes, some low form of organism, of which all
we know is that it has innumerable nervous centres
and some sort of philosophy for a brain, crumbles
and disappears. There is a decomposition into
smaller forms ; the bubble of the polity relapses into
inferior communities, the germ-cells of scattered
families ; and soul-making by that reservoir stops.
Yet the reservoir has bequeathed something: the
bubble of the Polity has relapsed, but the moist
ground of the spring, the diffused sphere of
Civilisation, remains larger than it was before.
