d and causes whose followers were overborne, yet they left their
ideas behind them as a glory in the air, and these incarnated anew
in the minds of the conquerors. Ideas are things which can only be
conquered by a greater beauty or intellectual power, and they are never
more powerful than when they do not come threatening us in alliance
with physical forces. I have no doubt there are many today who watch the
cloud over Europe as we may imagine some Israelite of old gazing on
that awful cloudy pillar wherein was the Lord, in hope or fear for some
revelation of the spirit hidden in cloud and fire. What idea is hidden
in the fiery pillar which moves over Europe? What form will it assume
in its manifestation? How will it exercise dominion over the spirit?
Whatever idea is most powerful in the world must draw to it the
intellect and spirit of humanity, and it will be monarch over their
minds either by reason of their love or hate for it. It is more true
to say we must think of the most powerful than to say we must love the
highest, because even the blind can feel power, while it is rare to have
vision of high things.

A little over a century ago all the needles of being pointed to France.
A peculiar manifestation of the democratic idea had become the most
powerful thing in the world of moral forces. It went on multiplying
images of itself in men's minds through after generations; and, because
thought, like matter, is subject to the laws of action and reaction,
which indeed is the only safe basis for prophecy, this idea inevitably
found itself opposed by a contrary idea in the world. Today all the
needles of being point to Germany, where the apparition of the organized
State is manifest with every factor, force, and entity co-ordinated, so
that the State might move myriads and yet have the swift freedom of the
athletic individual. The idea that the State exists for the people is
countered by the idea that the individual exists for the State. France
in a violent reaction found itself dominated by a Caesar. Germany may
find itself without a Caesar, but with a social democracy.

But, if it does, will the idea Europe is fighting be conquered? Was the
French idea conquered either by the European confederation without or by
Napoleon within? It invaded men's minds everywhere; and in few countries
did the democratic ideas operate more powerfully than in these islands,
where the State was a most determined antagonist of their material