ABSTRACT
In the human race Unanimity, which is essential to a just democracy, may have arisen spontaneously or, more often, it may be obtained for a time, in a special society, by force or by propaganda, as we find it in the history of Islam and of Christianity or in the 411Communism of to-day. If these militant systems could be pursued thoroughly and continuously they might even bend the hereditary constitution of the psyche in those peoples, so that their children should be born unanimously ready to be Moslems or Christians or Communists, as ants and bees are born unanimous in their social tasks. But this would be exceptional, for nature hardly allows artificial virtues to flourish for more than a season; and when they are lost, the lovers of moral unanimity are perhaps tempted to appeal from nature and the arts, which are historical growths, to reason, which is a moral ideal. Reason never rules the world, but it sometimes beckons in the conscience and seems to shine in a specious harmony of chosen words or ideas. Now, amid the quarrels and disputes of social life, reason, aided by convenience, sees a particularly simple, practicable, and easy path to unanimity. This path is Compromise.
