It gives something like a working
assumption for the needs of the present time. People can get along upon
that. But it does not exhaust the question. We seek a real and
understanding synthesis. We want a real collectivism, not a poetical
idea; a means whereby men and women of all sorts, all kinds of humanity,
may pray together, sing together, stand side by side, feel the same wave
of emotion, develop a collective being. Doubtless right-spirited men are
praying now at a thousand discrepant altars. But for the most part those
who pray imagine those others who do not pray beside them are in error,
they do not know their common brotherhood and salvation. Their
brotherhood is masked by unanalyzable differences; theirs is a dispersed
collectivism; their churches are only a little more extensive than their
individualities and intenser in their collective separations.
The true Church towards which my own thoughts tend will be the conscious
illuminated expression of Catholic brotherhood. It must, I think,
develop out of the existing medley of Church fragments and out of all
that is worthy in our poetry and literature, just as the worldwide
Socialist State at which I aim must develop out of such state and casual
economic organizations and constructive movements as exist to-day.
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