PDF-file (The same edition. Another cover. 2.2 Mb)

556 The Ideal of Human Unityrational hope, their clear-sighted ideal or their strong counsel ofperfection.The geographical necessity for a unification of this kind doesnot exist, unless we consider that it has been created throughthe drawing closer together of the earth and its inhabitants byScience and her magical lessening of physical distances and attenuationof barriers. But whatever may happen in the future,this is as yet not sufficient; earth is still large enough and herdivisions still real enough for her to do without any formalunity. If there is any strong need, it may be described — if suchan epithet can be applied to a thing in the present and the future— as a historical necessity, that is, a need which has arisen as theresult of certain actual circumstances that have grown up in theevolution of international relations. And that need is economic,political, mechanical, likely under certain circumstances to createsome tentative or preliminary framework, but not at firsta psychological reality which will vivify the frame. Moreover,it is not yet sufficiently vital to be precisely a necessity; for itamounts mainly to a need for the removal of certain perils andinconveniences, such as the constant danger of war, and at mostto the strong desirability of a better international coordination.But by itself this creates only a possibility, not even a moralcertainty, of a first vague sketch and loose framework of unitywhich may or may not lead to something more close and real.But there is another power than that of external circumstancewhich we have a right to take into consideration. Forbehind all the external circumstances and necessities of whichwe are more easily aware in Nature, there is always an internalnecessity in the being, a will and a design in Nature itself whichprecedes the outward signals of its development and in spiteof all obstacles and failures must in the long end inevitably getitself realised. Nowadays we can see this truth everywhere inNature down to her lowest forms; a will in the very seed ofthe being, not quite conscious or only partially conscious in theform itself, but still present there in Nature. It is subconsciousor even inconscient if you like, but it is still a blind will, a muteidea which contains beforehand the form it is going to create, is