POSTSCRIPT OF 1919

would be to strengthen the grip of the unsatisfactory stable-minded class upon the gullet of society. The evidence then shows that among the mechanisms whereby the directors of society are chosen there is none that favours that intervention of the conscious and instructed intellect that we have suggested is necessary to the effective evolution of civilization. Nowhere in the structure of society is there a class tending to develop towards this goal. Since from the point of view of social effectiveness segregation into classes has been entirely random, the appearance of such a class would have been indeed an extraordinary accident. Good as are the grounds for hoping that human society may ultimately mature into a coherent structure possessed of comprehensive and intelligent direction, it would be no more than idle optimism to suppose that there is any institution or class now existing which promises to inspire a fundamental {259} reconstruction. If the effective intrusion of the intellect into social affairs does happily occur, it will come from no organ of society now recognizable, but through a slow elevation of the general standard of consciousness up to the level at which will be possible a kind of freemasonry and syndicalism of the intellect. Under