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Chapter XXVIIThe Peril of the World-StateTHIS THEN is the extreme possible form of a World-State, the form dreamed of by the socialistic, scientific,humanitarian thinkers who represent the modern mind atits highest point of self-consciousness and are therefore able todetect the trend of its tendencies, though to the half-rationalisedmind of the ordinary man whose view does not go beyond theday and its immediate morrow, their speculations may seem tobe chimerical and utopian. In reality they are nothing of thekind; in their essence, not necessarily in their form, they are, aswe have seen, not only the logical outcome, but the inevitablepractical last end of the incipient urge towards human unity, ifit is pursued by a principle of mechanical unification, — that isto say, by the principle of the State. It is for this reason thatwe have found it necessary to show the operative principlesand necessities which have underlain the growth of the unifiedand finally socialistic nation-State, in order to see how the samemovement in international unification must lead to the sameresults by an analogous necessity of development. The Stateprinciple leads necessarily to uniformity, regulation, mechanisation;its inevitable end is socialism. There is nothing fortuitous,no room for chance in political and social development, and theemergence of socialism was no accident or a thing that mightor might not have been, but the inevitable result containedin the very seed of the State idea. It was inevitable from themoment that idea began to be hammered out in practice. Thework of the Alfreds and Charlemagnes and other prematurenational or imperial unifiers contained this as a sure result,for men work almost always without knowing for what theyhave worked. But in modern times the signs are so clear thatwe need not be deceived or imagine, when we begin to lay amechanical base for world-unification, that the result contained