the greatest good of
the greatest number" must include, not his own nation merely, but the
remotest member of the human race. On this universal basis must be
founded that absolute standard of ethics which will determine the
relations of cosmopolite man with his fellows. When this ideal is
attained, mankind will again represent a single family, as it did in the
day when our primeval ancestors first entered on the pathway of
progress; but it will be a family whose habitat has been extended from
the narrow glade of some tropical forest to the utmost habitable
confines of the globe. Each member of this family will be permitted to
enjoy the greatest amount of liberty consistent with the like liberty of
every other member; but the interests of the few will everywhere be
recognized as subservient to the interests of the many, and such
recognition of mutual interests will establish the practical criterion
for the interpretation of international affairs.

Progress and efficiency.

But such an extension of the altruistic principle by no means
presupposes the elimination of egoistic impulses--of individualism. On
the contrary, we must suppose that man at the highest stages of culture
will be, even as was the savage, a seeker after the greatest attainable
degree of comfort for the least necessary expenditure of energy. The
pursuit of this ideal has been from first to last the ultimate impelling
force in nature urging man forward. The only change has been a change in
the interpretation of the ideal, an altered estimate as to what manner
of things are most worth the purchase-price of toil and self-denial.
That the things most worth the having cannot, generally speaking, be
secured without such toil and self-denial, is a lesson that began to be
inculcated while man was a savage, and that has never ceased to be
reiterated generation after generation. It is the final test of
progressive civilization that a given effort shall produce a larger and
larger modicum of average individual comfort. That is why the great
inventions that have increased man's efficiency as a worker have been
the necessary prerequisites to racial progress. Stated otherwise, that
is why the industrial factor is everywhere the most powerful factor in
civilization; and why the economic interpretation is the most searching
interpretation of history at its every stage. It is the basal fact that
progress implies increased average working efficiency--a growing ratio