The argument takes us back for a moment to the essay on education.  We left off there at a point where the old unity based on Greco-Roman culture was seen to be disappearing in a confused mass of new studies, partly suggested by modern languages and history, still more by the growth of science and the application of science to the problems of contemporary life.  It may well be that in this conception of humanity, the co-operation of mankind in a growing structure of thought, we shall ultimately find the idee-mere under which all the other subordinate ideas in education may be grouped and inspired.  This might take place if the notion were grasped in no narrow sense, but so broadly that all human thought, religion, and philosophy, art as well as science, might find their justification in it.

The advantage of putting the educational issue first has been already indicated.  We can all get to work on it at once for ourselves, and it is a far more fundamental and, in some respects, easier thing to introduce a new idea into the minds of others than to alter the boundaries and political conditions of States.  If we once achieved a general atmosphere of co-operation and goodwill in the world, the practical problems would be already more than half solved.

Discussion will take place, with more and more vigour as years go on, as to the various measures which have been described collectively as the establishment of a World-State.  At what point could it be said that a World-State is in being?  How can such a World-State be reconciled with the independent sovereignty of the several States comprised in it?  What is to be the sanction imposing the decisions of the larger community on its constituent members?  Such are a few of the problems involved in any advance towards the Kantian ideal of cosmopolitanism.  None of them admit of a single definite answer.  They do not belong to questions of pure theory, and we shall have to solve them slowly and with difficulty, seizing every favourable opportunity of a slight advance, avoiding grave obstacles, compromising with every possible friend.

But for the moment we seem likely to be overwhelmed by unchained passions which are the practical denial of everything that the ideal of humanity implies.  Instead of co-operation we are faced by schemes of conquest and domination, and the simplest notion of brotherhood is limited to comradeship in arms for defence or attack.  Many will be found to ridicule the idea that any real progress in unity has ever been made, or that the world can ever be envisaged except as an irksome enclosure of rival armed forces thirsting for the fray.  But to those who are not prepared to accept this as the last word in human association the argument of this volume may have some weight.  It will lead those who follow it to a quiet but well-grounded belief that the forces tending to unity in the world are different in quality, incomparably greater in scope than those which make for disruption.  Discord is explosive and temporary, harmony rises slowly but dominates the final chord.