The Great Illusion

and Louisiana than between Louisiana and, say, Iowa, parts of the same State. There is much closer intercommunication between Britain and the United States in all that touches social and moral development than between Britain and, say, Bengal, part of the same State. An English nobleman has more community of thought and feeling with a European continental aristocrat (will marry his daughter, for instance) than he would think of claiming with such “fellow” British countrymen as a Bengal Babu, a Jamaica negro, or even a Dorset yokel. A professor at Oxford will have closer community of feeling with a member of the French Academy than with, say, a Whitechapel publican. One may go further, and say that a British subject of Quebec has closer contact with Paris than with London; the British subject of Dutch-speaking Africa with Holland than with England; the British subject of Hong Kong with Peking than with London; of Egypt, with Constantinople than with London, and so on. In a thousand respects, association cuts across State boundaries, which are purely conventional, and renders the biological division of mankind into independent and warring States a scientific ineptitude.

Allied factors, introduced by the character of modern intercourse, have already gone far to render territorial conquest futile for the satisfaction of natural human pride and vanity. Just as in the economic sphere, factors peculiar to our generation have rendered the old analogy between States and persons a false one, so do these factors render the analogy in the sentimental sphere a false one. While the individual of great possessions does in fact obtain, by reason of his wealth, a deference which satisfies his pride and vanity, the individual of the great nation has no such sentimental advantage as against the citizen of the small nation. No one thinks of respecting the Russian muzhik because he belongs to a great nation, or despising a Scandinavian or Belgian gentleman because he belongs to a small one; and any society will accord prestige to the nobleman of Norway, Holland, Belgium, Spain, or even Portugal, which it refuses to an American “Climber.” The nobleman of any country will marry the noblewoman of another more readily than a woman from a lower class of his own country. The prestige of the foreign country rarely counts for anything in the matter, when it comes to the real facts of everyday life, so shallow is the real sentiment which now divides States. Just as in material things community of interest and relationship cut clear across State boundaries, so inevitably will the psychic community of interest come so to do.

Just as, in the material domain, the real biological law, which is association and cooperation between individuals of the same species in the struggle with their environment, has pushed men in their material struggle to conform with that law, so will it do so in the sentimental sphere. We shall come to realize that the real psychic and moral divisions are not as between nations, but as between opposing conceptions of life. Even admitting that man’s nature will never lose the combativeness, hostility, and animosity which are so large a part of it (although the manifestations of such feelings have so greatly changed within the historical period as almost to have changed in character), what we shall see is the diversion of those psychological qualities to the real, instead of the artificial, conflict of mankind. We shall see that at the bottom of any conflict between the armies or Governments of Germany and England lies not the opposition of “German” interests to “English” interests, but the conflict in both States between democracy and autocracy, or between Socialism and Individualism, or reaction and progress, however one’s sociological sympathies may classify it. That is the real division in both countries, and for Germans to conquer English, or English Germans, would not advance the solution of such a conflict one iota; and as such conflict becomes more acute, the German individualist will see that it is more important to protect his freedom and property against the Socialist and trade unionist, who can and do attack them, than against the British Army, which cannot. In the same way the British Tory will be more concerned with what Mr. Lloyd George’s Budgets can do than with what the Germans can do.55 From the realization of these things to the realization on the part of the British democrat that what stands in the way of his securing for social expenditure enormous sums, that now go to armaments, is mainly a lack of cooperation between himself and the democrats of a hostile nation who are in a like case, is but a step, and a step that, if history has any meaning, is bound shortly to be taken. When it is taken, property, capital, Individualism will have to give to its international organization, already far-reaching, a still more definite form, in which international differences will play no part. And when that condition is reached, both peoples will find inconceivable the idea that artificial State divisions (which are coming more and more to approximate to mere administrative divisions, leaving free scope within them or across them for the development of genuine nationality) could ever in any way define the real conflicts of mankind.

There remains, of course, the question of time; that these developments will take “thousands” or “hundreds” of years. Yet the interdependence of modern nations is the growth of little more than fifty years. A century ago England could have been self-supporting, and little the worse for it. One must not overlook the Law of Acceleration. The age of man on the earth is placed variously at from thirty thousand to three hundred thousand years. He has in some respects developed more in the last two hundred years than in all the preceding ages. We see more change now in ten years than originally in ten thousand. Who shall foretell the developments of a generation?

III

Unchanging Human Nature

The