nds of endeavour, are by no means of a
uniform or homogeneous character throughout the modern communities,
still less throughout the civilised world, or throughout the checkered
range of classes and conditions of men; but, with such frequency and
amplitude that it must be taken as a major premise in any attempted
insight into human behaviour, it will hold true that they are of a
spiritual, immaterial nature.

The caution may, parenthetically, not be out of place, that this
characterisation of the ulterior springs of action as essentially not of
the nature of creature comforts, need be taken in no wider extension
than that which so is specifically given it. It will be found to apply
as touches the conduct of the common run; what modification of it might
be required to make it at all confidently applicable to the case of one
and another of those classes into whose scheme of life creature comforts
enter with more pronounced effect may be more of a delicate point. But
since it is the behaviour, and the grounds of behaviour, of the common
run that are here in question, the case of their betters in this respect
may conveniently be left on one side.

The question in hand touches the behavior of the common man, taken in
the aggregate, in face of the quandary into which circumstances have led
him; since the question of what these modern peoples will do is after
all a question of what the common man in the aggregate will do, of his
own motion or by persuasion. His betters may be in a position to guide,
persuade, cajole, mislead, and victimise him; for among the many
singular conceits that beset the common man is the persuasion that his
betters are in some way better than he, wiser, more beneficent. But the
course that may so be chosen, with or without guidance or persuasion
from the superior classes, as well as the persistence and energy with
which this course is pursued, is conditioned on the frame of mind of the
common run.

Just what will be the nature and the concrete expression of these ideal
aspirations that move the common run is a matter of habitual
preconceptions; and habits of thought vary from one people to another
according to the diversity of experience to which they have been
exposed. Among the Western nations the national prestige has come to
seem worth while as an ulterior end, perhaps beyond all else that is
comprised in the secular scheme of things desirable to be had or to be
achieved. And in the apprehensio