CHAPTER XIX   THE DRIVE TOWARDS CENTRALISATION AND UNIFORMITY. ADMINISTRATION AND CONTROL OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS   SUPPOSING the free grouping of the nations according to their natural affinities, sentiments, sense of economical and other convenience to be the final basis of a stable world-union, the next question that arises is what precisely would be the status of these nation-units in the larger and more complex unity of mankind. Would they possess only a nominal separateness and become parts of a machine or retain a real and living individuality and an effective freedom and organic life? Practically, this comes to the question

CHAPTER XXXI   THE CONDITIONS OF A FREE WORLD-UNION   A FREE world-union must in its very nature be a complex unity based on a diversity and that diversity must be based on free self-determination. A mechanical unitarian system would regard in its idea the geographical groupings of men as so many conveniences for provincial division, for the convenience of administration, much in the same spirit as the French Revolution reconstituted France with an entire disregard of old natural and historic divisions. It would regard mankind as one single nation and it would try to efface the old separative national spirit altogether; it would arran

INDEX   A   Absolutism, 121, 201, 202 Abyssinia, Italian imperialist venture in, 89, 267 self-determination after the first war, 271 Acara, habits determined by the inner nature of group man, 187 Africa, Central and Southern, 177 European domination in, 170, 270 expulsion of Germany from, 132 its regional life killed by Rome, 109 North, European conquest of, 267 in the causal chain of the first war, 132 likely grouping with Muslim West Asia, 175 the impact of French culture, 60 South, race difficulty in, 72 the pr

CHAPTER XXV   WAR AND THE NEED OF ECONOMIC UNITY    THE military necessity, the pressure of war between nations and the need for prevention of war by the assumption of force and authority in the hands of an international body, World-State or Federation or League of Peace, is that which will most directly drive humanity in the end towards some sort of international union. But there is behind it another necessity which is much more powerful in its action on the modem mind, the commercial and industrial, the necessity born of economic interdependence. Commercialism is a modern sociological phenomenon; one might almost say that is the whole p

CHAPTER XXXIV   THE RELIGION OF HUMANITY    A RELIGION of humanity may be either an intellecutal and sentimental ideal, a living dogma with intellectual, psychological and practical effects, or else a spiritual aspiration and rule of living and partly the sign, partly the cause of a change of soul in humanity. The intellectual religion of humanity already to a certain extent exists, partly as a conscious trend in the minds of a few, partly as a potent shadow in the consciousness of the race. It is the shadow of a spirit that is yet unborn, but is preparing for its birth. This material world of ours, besides its fully embodied things of the pres

CHAPTER XXX   THE PRINCIPLE OF FREE CONFEDERATION   THE issues of the original Russian idea of a confederation of free self-determining nationalities were greatly complicated by the transitory phenomena of a revolution which has sought, like the French Revolution before it, to transform immediately and without easy intermediate stages the whole basis not only of government, but of society, and has, moreover, been carried out under pressure of a disastrous war. This double situation led inevitably to an unexampled anarchy and, incidentally, to the forceful domination of an extreme party which represented the ideas of the Revolution in t

CHAPTER XXVIII   DIVERSITY IN ONENESS   IT is essential to keep constantly in view the fundamental powers and realities of life if we are not to be betrayed by the arbitrary rule of the logical reason and its attachment to the rigorous and limiting idea into experiments which, however convenient in practice and however captivating to a unitarian and symmetrical thought, may well destroy the vigour and impoverish the roots of life. For that which is perfect and satisfying to the system of the logical reason may yet ignore the truth of life and the living needs of the race. Unity is an idea which is not at all arbitrary or unreal; for unity is the very

CHAPTER XXIX   THE IDEA OF A LEAGUE OF NATIONS    THE only means that readily suggests itself by which a necessary group-freedom can be preserved and yet the unification of the human race achieved, is to strive not towards a closely organised world-State, but towards a free, elastic and progressive world-union. If this is to be done, we shall have to discourage the almost inevitable tendency which must lead any unification by political, economic and administrative means, in a word, by the force of machinery, to follow the analogy of the evolution of the nation-State. And we shall have to encourage and revive that force of idealistic nationa

CHAPTER XXIII   FORMS OF GOVERNMENT   . THE idea of a world-union of free nations and empires, loose at first, but growing closer-knit with time and experience, seems at first sight the most practicable form of political unity; it is the only form indeed which would be immediately practicable, supposing the will to unity to become rapidly effective in the mind of the race. On the other hand, it is the State idea which is now dominant. The State has been the most successful and efficient means of unification and has been best able to meet the various needs which the progressive aggregate life of societies has created for itself and is still creating. It

CHAPTER XX   THE DRIVE TOWARDS ECONOMIC CENTRALISATION   THE objective organisation of a national unity is not yet complete when it has arrived at the possession of a single central authority and the unity and uniformity of its political, military and strictly administrative functions. There is another side of its organic life, the legislative and its corollary, the judicial function, which is equally important; the exercise of legislative power becomes eventually indeed, although it was not always, the characteristic sign of the sovereign. Logically, one would suppose that the conscious and organised determination of its own rules of lif