Chapter IX   THE POSSIBILITY OF A WORLD-EMPIRE         The progress of the imperial idea from the artificial and constructive stage to the position of a realised psychological truth controlling the human mind with the same force and vitality which now distinguish the national idea above all other group motives, is only a possibility, not a certainty of the future. It is even no more than a vaguely nascent possibility and so long as it has not emerged from this inchoate condition in which it is at the mercy of the much folly of statesmen, the formidable passions of great human masses, the obstinate self-interest of established egoisms, we can have no surety that it will not even now

A POSTSCRIPT CHAPTER         At the time when this book was being brought to its close, the first attempt at the foundation of some initial hesitating beginning of the new world-order, which both governments and peoples had begun to envisage as a permanent necessity if there was to be any order in the world at all, was under debate and consideration but had not yet been given a concrete and practical form; but this had to come and eventually a momentous beginning was made. It took the name and appearance of what was called a League of Nations. It was not happy in its conception, well-inspired in its formation or destined to any considerable longevity or a supremely successful ca

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 arrange its system probably by continents and

Chapter XXXV   SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION         In other words,—and this is the conclusion at which we arrive,—while it is possible to construct a precarious and quite mechanical unity by political and administrative means, the unity of the human race, even if achieved, can only be secured and can only be made real if the religion of humanity, which is at present the highest active ideal of mankind, spiritualises itself and becomes the general inner law of human life.         The outward unity may well achieve itself,—possibly, though by no means certainly, in a measurable time,-because that is the inevitable final trend of the working of Nature in human society which makes

Chapter XVII   NATURE'S LAW IN OUR PROGRESS-UNITY IN DIVERSITY, LAW AND LIBERTY         For man alone of terrestrial creatures to live rightly involves the necessity of knowing rightly, whether, as rationalism pretends, by the sole or dominant instrumentation of his reason or, more largely and complexly, by the sum of his faculties; and what he has to know is the true nature of being and its constant self-effectuation in the values of life, in less abstract language the law of Nature and especially of his own nature, the forces within him and around him and their right utilisation for his own greater perfection and happiness or for that and the greater perfection and happiness of

Publishers' Note         The three books — The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity and War and Self-Determination—printed and published originally as separate volumes and at different times, are put together here in one volume : they form in fact a unit, a trilogy as it were, depicting the historical process that the Time-Spirit deploys in the elaboration of the divine plan in the evolution of human life.         The Human Cycle in its first edition (1949) was prefaced with the following explanatory note:       "The Chapters constituting this book were written under the title 'The Psychology of Social Development' from month to month in the philosophical monthly, '

Chapter XXXIII   INTERNATIONALISM AND HUMAN UNITY         The great necessity, then, and the great difficulty is to help this idea of humanity which is already at work upon our minds and has even begun in a very slight degree to influence from above our actions, and turn it into something more than an idea, however strong, to make it a central motive and a fixed part of our nature. Its satisfaction must become a necessity of our psychological being, just as the family idea or the national idea has become each a psychological motive with its own need of satisfaction. But how is this to be done ? The family idea had the advantage of grow-ing out of a primary vital need in our bein

Chapter VII   THE CREATION OF THE HETEROGENEOUS NATION         The problem of a federal empire founded on the sole foundation that is firm and secure, the creation of a true psychological unity,—an empire that has to combine heterogeneous elements,—resolves itself into two different factors, the question of the form and the question of the reality which the form is intended to serve. The former is of great practical importance, but the latter alone is vital. A form of unity may render possible, may favour or even help actively to create the corresponding reality, but it can never replace it. And, as we have seen, the true reality is in this order of Nature the psychological, since

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 basis of existence. Th

Chapter XXIV   THE NEED OF MILITARY UNIFICATION         In the process of centralisation by which all the powers of an organised community come to be centred in one sovereign governing body—the process which has been the most prominent characteristic of national formations, —military necessity has played at the beginning the largest overt part. This necessity was both external and internal, —external for the defence of the nation against disruption or subjection from without, internal for its defence against civil disruption and disorder. If a common administrative authority is essential in order to bind together the constituent parts of a nation in the forming, the first need an