It would discover what natural inclinations in man must be indulged, and would make them respectable, what inclinations in him must be controlled for the advantage of the species, and make them insignificant. It would cultivate intercommunication and altruism on the one hand, and bravery, boldness, pride, and enterprise on the other. It would develop national unity to a communion of interest and sympathy far closer than anything yet dreamed of as possible, and by doing so would endow the national unit with a self-control, fortitude, and moral power which would make it so obviously unconquerable that war would cease to be a possibility. To a people magnanimous, self-possessed, and open-eyed, unanimous in sentiment and aware of its strength, the conquest of fellow-nations would present its full futility. They would need for the acceptable exercise of their powers some more difficult, more daring, and newer task, something that stretches the human will and the human intellect to the limit of their capacity; the mere occupation and re-occupation of the stale and blood-drenched earth would be to them barbarians’ work; time and space would be their quarry, destiny and the human soul the lands they would invade; they would sail their ships into the gulfs of the ether and lay tribute upon the sun and stars.
It is one of the features of the present crisis that gives to it its biological significance, that one of the antagonists—Germany—has discovered the necessity and value of conscious direction of the social unit. This is in itself an epoch-making event. Like many other human discoveries of similar importance, it has been incomplete, and it has not been accompanied by the corresponding knowledge of man and his natural history which alone could have given it full fertility and permanent value. {164}
It seems to have been in no way a revelation of genius, and, indeed, the absence of any great profundity and scope of speculation is rather remarkable in the minds of the numerous German political philosophers. The idea would appear rather to have been developed out of the circumstances of the country, and to have been almost a habit before