Excerpt from Socialism and Government, Vol. 1 The State as we know it to - day, with national boundaries as its condition and national armies and navies as its most dramatic form of expression, is probably doomed to disappear and, at some still distant date, the parliament of man may assemble to represent the federation of the world. Yea, even the idea of government based upon force and carried out by legal enactment may become foreign to the human mind when in some far remote generation the beatitudes have become the common rule of life and the moral ideas of the Prophets have been embodied in the ordin ary habits of the people. But these visions of the New Jerusalem only come to uswhen we are in the Spirit. Our heritageis Patmos - its spite, its politics, its problems. As yet, humanity is broken into fragments - colours, civilisations, races, nations. Its future perfections must grow from its present imperfections, and the task of the social reformer who works for permanent results is to begin improving with the material which he has at hand. Ideals are only valuable when they are used for the practical purpose of regenerating the exist ing realities. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.