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Chapter XIThe Small Free Unit and theLarger Concentrated UnityIF WE consider the possibilities of a unification of the humanrace on political, administrative and economic lines, we seethat a certain sort of unity or first step towards it appears notonly to be possible, but to be more or less urgently demanded byan underlying spirit and sense of need in the race. This spirit hasbeen created largely by increased mutual knowledge and closecommunication, partly by the development of wider and freerintellectual ideals and emotional sympathies in the progressivemind of the race. The sense of need is partly due to the demandfor the satisfaction of these ideals and sympathies, partly toeconomic and other material changes which render the resultsof divided national life, war, commercial rivalry and consequentinsecurity and peril to the complex and easily vulnerable modernsocial organisation more and more irksome both for the economicand political human animal and for the idealistic thinker.Partly also the new turn is due to the desire of the successfulnations to possess, enjoy and exploit the rest of the world atease without the peril incurred by their own formidable rivalriesand competitions and rather by some convenient understandingand compromise among themselves. The real strength of thistendency is in its intellectual, idealistic and emotional parts. Itseconomic causes are partly permanent and therefore elementsof strength and secure fulfilment, partly artificial and temporaryand therefore elements of insecurity and weakness. The politicalincentives are the baser part in the amalgam; their presence mayeven vitiate the whole result and lead in the end to a necessarydissolution and reversal of whatever unity may be initiallyaccomplished.Still, a result of some kind is possible in the comparatively