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324 The Ideal of Human Unitycreate as a bridge from the nation-idea to the empire-idea ofpolitical unity. That which unites men most securely now is thephysical unity of a common country to live in and defend, acommon economic life dependent on that geographical onenessand the sentiment of the motherland which grows up aroundthe physical and economic fact and either creates a political andadministrative unity or keeps it to a secure permanence once ithas been created. Let us then extend this powerful sentiment bya fiction; let us demand of the heterogeneous constituents of theempire that each shall regard not his own physical motherlandbut the empire as the mother or at least, if he clings to the oldsentiment, learn to regard the empire first and foremost as thegreater mother. A variation of this idea is the French notionof the mother country, France; all the other possessions of theempire, although in English phraseology they would rather beclassed as dependencies in spite of the large share of politicalrights conceded to them, are to be regarded as colonies of themother country, grouped together in idea as France beyond theseas and educated to centre their national sentiments around thegreatness, glory and lovableness of France the common mother.It is a notion natural to the Celtic-Latin temperament, thoughalien to the Teutonic, and it is supported by a comparative weaknessof race and colour prejudice and by that remarkable powerof attraction and assimilation which the French share with allthe Celtic nations.The power, the often miraculous power of such fictionsought not for a moment to be ignored. They constitute Nature’smost common and effective method when she has to dealwith her own ingrained resistance to change in her mentalisedanimal, man. Still, there are conditions without which a fictioncannot succeed. It must in the first place be based on a plausiblesuperficial resemblance. It must lead to a realisable fact strongenough either to replace the fiction itself or eventually to justifyit. And this realisable fact must progressively realise itselfand not remain too long in the stage of the formless nebula.There was a time when these conditions were less insistentlynecessary, a time when the mass of men were more imaginative,