ABSTRACT
Yet the small community has supplied the lifeblood of civilization, and neglect of it has been one of the primary reasons for the slowness and the interrupted course of human progress. Small communities are the sources of city population. Large cities have such low birth-rates that if their population were not renewed from outside they would almost disappear in four or five generations. A leader is a person of unusual native vigor, intelligence, or personality, who uses that superiority to give expression to the character he acquired from family and community. The age of force and strategy, of conquest, of empire, and of feudalism, swept over and submerged this ancient community life. Many of the ideals which the Western world holds as most precious are survivals from the ancient community way of life. Many an American community has had its unity disrupted by the strategy of political or religious ideologies, some claiming to be sole repositories of truth.
