of disunity. Its manifestations
everywhere cripple political will, debilitate the collective urge to
change, and poison national and religious relationships. How strange,
then, that unity is regarded as a goal to be attained, if at all, in a
distant future, after a host of disorders in social, political, economic
and moral life have been addressed and somehow or other resolved. Yet the
latter are essentially symptoms and side effects of the problem, not its
root cause. Why has so fundamental an inversion of reality come to be
widely accepted? The answer is presumably because the achievement of
genuine unity of mind and heart among peoples whose experiences are deeply
at variance is thought to be entirely beyond the capacity of society's
existing institutions. While this tacit admission is a welcome advance
over the understanding of processes of social evolution that prevailed a
few decades ago, it is of limited practical assistance in responding to
the challenge.

Unity is a condition of the human spirit. Education can support and
enhance it, as can legislation, but they can do so only once it emerges
and has established itself as a compelling force in social life. A global
intelligentsia, its prescriptions largely shaped by materialistic
misconceptions of reality, clings tenaciously to the hope that imaginative
social engineering, supported by political compromise, may indefinitely
postpone the potential disasters that few deny loom over humanity's
future. "We can well perceive how the whole human race is encompassed with
great, with incalculable afflictions", Baha'u'llah states. "They that are
intoxicated by self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the
Divine and infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men,
themselves included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither
discover the cause of the disease, nor have they any knowledge of the
remedy."(54) As unity is the remedy for the world's ills, its one certain
source lies in the restoration of religion's influence in human affairs.
The laws and principles revealed by God, in this day, Baha'u'llah
declares, "are the most potent instruments and the surest of all means for
the dawning of the light of unity amongst men."(55) "Whatsoever is raised
on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair
its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its
structure."(56)

Central to Baha'u'llah's