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580 The Ideal of Human Unitypossibilities that may baulk or delay for a time the success ofthis great adventure, it is in this event that lies the determinationof what must be. All the catastrophes that have attended thiscourse of events and seem to arise of purpose in order to preventthe working out of her intention have not prevented, and evenfurther catastrophes will not prevent, the successful emergenceand development of an enterprise which has become a necessityfor the progress and perhaps the very existence of the race. Twostupendous and world-devastating wars have swept over theglobe and have been accompanied or followed by revolutionswith far-reaching consequences which have altered the politicalmap of the earth and the international balance, the once fairlystable equilibrium of five continents, and changed the wholefuture. A third still more disastrous war with a prospect ofthe use of weapons and other scientific means of destructionfar more fatal and of wider reach than any ever yet invented,weapons whose far-spread use might bring down civilisationwith a crash and whose effects might tend towards somethinglike extermination on a large scale, looms in prospect; the constantapprehension of it weighs upon the mind of the nationsand stimulates them towards further preparations for war andcreates an atmosphere of prolonged antagonism, if not yet ofconflict, extending to what is called “cold war” even in timesof peace. But the two wars that have come and gone have notprevented the formation of the first and second considerableefforts towards the beginning of an attempt at union and thepractical formation of a concrete body, an organised instrumentwith that object: rather they have caused and hastened this newcreation. The League of Nations came into being as a directconsequence of the first war, the U.N.O. similarly as a consequenceof the second world-wide conflict. If the third war whichis regarded by many if not by most as inevitable does come, itis likely to precipitate as inevitably a further step and perhapsthe final outcome of this great world-endeavour. Nature usessuch means, apparently opposed and dangerous to her intendedpurpose, to bring about the fruition of that purpose. As in thepractice of the spiritual science and art of Yoga one has to raise