ANTICIPATIONS
gence. They tried to bring my New Republic within the official dimensions of their bureaucratic state, while I as earnestly tried to relax their outlook to the demands of my own temperament. "A Modern Utopia" with its Samurai was the fruit of this transitory and never entirely harmonious marriage of minds, and then, recoiling as it were, I set myself with what I now perceive was an entirely exaggerated and unnecessary horror to release the Fabian Society and British Socialism from the Webbs' influence. I failed scandalously after preposterous wranglings at Clifford's Inn and Essex Hall, wranglings in which Mr. Bernard Shaw somehow contrived to take a leading and entirely incomprehensible part, and which I still find too amusing to regret; and when I did at last draw breath on the further side of these discussions it was with Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb for a time beyond the reach of any ordinary apology[1] and a much clearer, if perhaps not materially different, conception of the underlying forces of government than those set forth in this book.
I saw then what hitherto I had merely felt—that there was in the affairs of mankind something unorganised which is greater than any organisation. This unorganised power is the ultimate sovereign in the world. It is a thing closely interwoven with the sum of educational forces. It is a thing of the intellectual life and it is also a thing of the will. It is something transcending persons just as physical or biological science or mathematics transcends persons. It is a racial
- ↑ But another ten years finds Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb very good friends again with the writer.
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