nly at the end; that it is something to be prepared for in
youth, worked for in maturity, and attained--well, {99} it is difficult
to say when. This is the fallacy of heaven transferred to earth. "Man
never is, but always to be blest." Life is conceived as a sentence at
hard labor, the only sure compensation being the ultimate deliverance.
Now there is but one justification of a life purpose, and that is its
conserving of the whole of life; it must save each day and each hour.
There is no more virtue in the future than in the present. "The
greatest disaster," says a Greek proverb, "is for a man to be opened
and found empty"; and this does not refer to an autopsy. It is at
least one function of a life-purpose to make life distributively and
continuously good. That one's life shall be pointed with a purpose
does not mean that it shall be reduced to a point. The very virtue of
organization lies in its making room for the free play of immediate and
particular interests, in its surrounding them at a distance with
invisible safeguards.

A second important case of sentimentalism is _nationalism_. The value
of the state lies in its protection and development of the concrete
life of the community. The true object of patriotism is social
welfare. But for the state as a provident economy, there may be
substituted as an object of loyalty what is only an idea or a name; and
when this is done men are easily persuaded to play into the hands of
unscrupulous leaders. {100} To the abominable tyrannies which have
thus been made possible I need not refer. In Hegel's philosophy of
history,[13] as well as in many modern political theories, this error
has been deliberately affirmed. But for illustration I prefer to turn
to the case of Plato. The _Republic_ was conceived, it is true,
without bias of party or race, but there is none the less a strain of
arbitrariness and illiberality in it. This is due to the fact that the
state is conceived by itself, with a quality and perfection of its own
that displaces the interests of its citizens.[14] A state which is
defined otherwise than as a provision for the very diversity of life,
an organization responsive to pressure from every constituent desire,
fails from over-simplification. This I take to be the meaning of
Aristotle's comment on the _Republic_:

The error of Socrates must be attributed to the false notion of unity
from which he starts. Unity there should be, both of the