THE CASE FOR REPUBLICANISM
present time with regard to such things as church and kingdom, constitution and nationality, we are altogether too much enslaved by the idea of "policy," and altogether too blind to the remoter, deeper, and more lasting consequences of our public acts, and institutions in moulding the next generation. It will not I think be amiss to pass beyond policy for a space, and to insist—even with heaviness—that however convenient an institution may be, however much it may, in the twaddle of the time, be a "natural growth," and however much the "product of a long evolution," yet, if it does not mould men into fine and vigorous forms, it has to be destroyed. We "save the State" and if in our intentness to save the State we injure or sacrifice our children, we destroy our ultimate for our proximate aim.
Already it has been pointed out, with certain concrete examples, how the thing that is, asserts itself over the thing that is to be; already a general indication has been made of the trend of the argument we are now about to develop and define. That argument, briefly, is this: that to attain the ends of the New Republic, that is to say the best results from our birth possibilities, we must continually make political forms, social, political and religious formulæ, and all the rules and regulations of life, the clearest simplest and sincerest expression possible of what we believe about life and hope about life; that whatever momentary advantage a generation may gain by accepting what is known to be a sham and a convention, by keeping in use the detected imposture and the flawed apparatus, is probably much
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