pulsion
taken the place of attraction. This may, perhaps, come about some day in
the material as well as in the spiritual and political world, but the
spirit of the age is as yet one of aggregation; the spirit of
Protestantism is one of disintegration. I maintain, therefore, that it
is not likely to be permanent.

All the great powers of Europe have from numberless distinct tribes
become first a few kingdoms or dukedoms, then two or three nations, and
now homogeneous wholes, so that there is no chance of their further
dismemberment through internal discontent; a process which has been
going on for so many hundreds of years all over Europe is not likely to
be arrested without ample warning. True, during the Roman Empire the
world was practically bonded together, yet broke in pieces again; but
this, I imagine, was because the bonding was prophetic and superficial
rather than genuine. Nature very commonly makes one or two false starts,
and misses her aim a time or two before she hits it. She nearly hit it
in the time of Alexander the Great, but this was a short-lived success;
in the case of the Roman Empire she succeeded better and for longer
together. Where Nature has once or twice hit her mark as near as this
she will commonly hit it outright eventually; the disruption of the
Roman Empire, therefore, does not militate against the supposition that
the normal condition of right-minded people is one which tends towards
aggregation, or, in other words, towards compromise and the merging of
much of one's own individuality for the sake of union and concerted
action.

See, again, how Rome herself, within the limits of Italy, was an
aggregation, an aggregation which has now within these last few years
come together again after centuries of disruption; all middle-aged men
have seen many small countries come together in their own lifetime,
while in America a gigantic attempt at disruption has completely failed.
Success will, of course, sometimes attend disruption, but on the whole
the balance inclines strongly in favour of aggregation and homogeneity;
analogy points in the direction of supposing that the great civilized
nations of Europe, as they are the coalition of subordinate provinces,
so must coalesce themselves also to form a larger, but single empire.
Wars will then cease, and surely anything that seems likely to tend
towards so desirable an end deserves respectful consideration.

The Church of Rome is essentially a unif