ialism. One thing is perhaps certain. We
cannot, as far as human sight can discern, ever hope to reconstruct
unity on the old basis of the Christian commonwealth of the Middle Ages.
Yet need is upon us still--need urgent and importunate--to find some
unity of the spirit in which we can all dwell together in peace. Some
have hoped for unity in the sphere of economics, and have thought that
international finance and commerce would build the foundations of an
international polity. Their hopes have had to sleep, and a year of war
has shown that 'a synchronized bank-rate and reacting bourses' imply no
further unity. Some again may hope for unity in the field of science,
and may trust that the collaboration of the nations in the building of
the common house of knowledge will lead to co-operation in the building
of a greater mansion for the common society of civilized mankind. But
nationalism can pervert even knowledge to its own ends, turning
anthropology to politics, and chemistry to war. There remains a last
hope--the hope of a common ethical unity, which, as moral convictions
slowly settle into law, may gradually grow concrete in a common public
law of the world. Even this hope can only be modest, but it is perhaps
the wisest and the surest of all our hopes. _Idem scire_ is a good
thing; but men of all nations may know the same thing, and yet remain
strangers one to another. _Idem velle idem nolle in re publica, ea demum
firma amicitia est_. The nations will at last attain firm friendship
one with another in the day when a common moral will controls the scope
of public things. And when they have attained this friendship, then on a
far higher level of economic development and with an improvement by each
nation of its talent which is almost entirely new--they will have found
again, if in a different medium, something of the unity of mediaeval
civilization.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

W.J. Ashley, _An Introduction to English Economic History_, vol. i, pt.
2, ch. 3; vol. i, pt. 2, ch. 6. Longmans.

Lord Bryce, _The Holy Roman Empire_. Macmillan.

A.J. and R.W. Carlyle, _Mediaeval Political Theory in the West_. W.
Blackwood.

H.W.C. Davis, _Mediaeval Europe_ (Home University Library). Williams &
Norgate.

_Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (11th edition), articles on 'Crusades' and
'Empire'.

J.N. Figgis, _Churches in the Modern State_, Appendix I. Longmans.

Bede Jarrett; _Socialist Theories in the Middle Ages_. T.C. and E.C.
J