Functional socialism

FUNCTION 49

My dictionary in part yields the definition I seek: “of or pertaining to the intellectual and higher endowments of the mind”. Yet I would add to that. The pure intelligence does not suffice; it must be fused with those emotional faculties that flower from the stems of faith and conscience. It is in the fusion or interplay of those qualities that a certain temper of mind is struck, which, given ample room in the body politic, is precious to the community .. .

It is my belief that a civilized people, unless its finer purposes are to be thwarted at every turn, must not only provide the means for the expression of its spiritual impulses, but endow them with the only sovereignty worth considering—the sovereignty of mind over matter, the enthronement of reason. It is by some such logic that I declare, without hesitation, for the sovereignty of the State, the spiritual State. For upon what is sovereignty based if not upon authority? And how, amidst the clash of the social forces, can authority survive, unless it be the final court of appeal in the sphere of reason? . . . The spiritual State is not the emanation of a dream; it is the pre-requisite to social reorganization. For if, on the Guild hypothesis, the economic functions are assigned to the National Guilds, it follows that the State must either secure allegiance to its spiritual status or lapse into desuetude: must be the expression of citizenship on a higher plane, or citizenship will lose itself in the distractions of wealth production, the spiritual heritage of the centuries lost for ever in the triumph of the material forces.

So much, then, for the modern meaning of the word ‘“‘spiritual””—‘‘of or pertaining to the intellecD