seven years. Then began its so-called “constructive work”. This was perfectly right, natural and logical.
A world theory is intolerant and is not content with being one Party amongst a number of other Parties ; it insists on exclusive and persistent recognition of itself and on an absolutely new conception of the whole of public life in accordance with its views. Thus it cannot tolerate continuance of a force representing the former conditions.
It is the same with religions. Christianity was not content with merely erecting its own altar ; it was forced to proceed to destroy the altars of the heathen. Such fanatical intolerance alone made it possible to build up that adamantine creed ; it is an absolutely essential condition of its existence.
Political Parties are always ready to compromise ; world theories never are. Political Parties bargain with their opponents ; world theories proclaim that they themselves are infallible.
Even political Parties almost always at first cherish a hope of rising to despotic authority ; they nearly always contain some little trace of a world theory. But the poverty of their programme robs them of the heroism which is demanded by a world theory. Their readiness to conciliate attracts to them the petty weak spirits, with whom no crusade can be conducted. So they usually stick fast early in their history in the slough of their own miserable pettiness.
A world theory can never be victorious with its ideas unless it unites in its ranks the boldest and strongest elements of its age and nation and forms them into a solid fighting organization. It is also essential for it to extract certain definite ideas out of the general world picture and present them in a concise, striking form, suitable to serve as a creed for a new community of mankind. Whereas the programme of a Party, which is merely political, is the receipt for getting good results from a