not according to preconceptions and narrow principles, but
according to the wisdom contained in the experience and the selective
powers of mankind as a whole. This means a life in which men live, so
to speak, more collectively.

These factors of the idea of internationalism, whatever we may think
of the possibility of their realization, make in their totality an
educational problem: they are specifications, so to speak, laid before
us for the making of a new educational product. If we say that it is
useless to think of such things, we are saying merely that it is
useless to hope to be a factor in conscious evolution, or that the
world as a whole has no purpose and no goal. If we believe education
has any function in the larger work of the world, educational
philosophy must take these things into account, see how they may be
created or sustained, and how they can be made to work together to
help bring to pass the kind of future men are talking so much about.

_I. The Essential World Idea_

Our present situation has plainly made it necessary for us to
understand the world in which we live far better than we have in the
past, and to be willing to make more dispassionate judgments about it.
For better or for worse we have entered upon a new stage of history,
in which heavy responsibilities fall upon all peoples, and upon none
more than upon ourselves. Enlightenment beyond all our present
understanding is a necessity. We have been peculiarly isolated and
separated from the world's affairs; now we are peculiarly involved. We
have, however, one great and unusual advantage. In our case it is
ignorance rather than prejudice that we must overcome in ourselves.
The world feels this and recognizes the unusual place this gives us.
We have no thousand years of continuous strife to distort our
historical perspective. We out to be able to be just interpreters of
the history of the world. Our universities ought to be the greatest
centers of historical learning, and as a people we should feel
ourselves called upon above all other people to know the world.

As a nation we pass out of a local into a broader political field. We
become citizens of a world, but this world is no mere habitation of
individuals who are to be affiliated with one another. It is a world
of _national wills_. Internationalism is first of all a recognition of
the legitimate desires of nations. But such a recognition of the
legitimate desires of nations cannot b