nd irresistibly to the unification of the human race
in a single social order whose boundaries are those of the planet. The
human race, as a distinct, organic unit, has passed through evolutionary
stages analogous to the stages of infancy and childhood in the lives of
its individual members, and is now in the culminating period of its
turbulent adolescence approaching its long-awaited coming of age.

A candid acknowledgement that prejudice, war and exploitation have been
the expression of immature stages in a vast historical process and that
the human race is today experiencing the unavoidable tumult which marks
its collective coming of age is not a reason for despair but a
prerequisite to undertaking the stupendous enterprise of building a
peaceful world. That such an enterprise is possible, that the necessary
constructive forces do exist, that unifying social structures can be
erected, is the theme we urge you to examine.

Whatever suffering and turmoil the years immediately ahead may hold,
however dark the immediate circumstances, the Baha'i community believes
that humanity can confront this supreme trial with confidence in its
ultimate outcome. Far from signalizing the end of civilization, the
convulsive changes towards which humanity is being ever more rapidly
impelled will serve to release the "potentialities inherent in the station
of man" and reveal "the full measure of his destiny on earth, the innate
excellence of his reality".

I

The endowments which distinguish the human race from all other forms of
life are summed up in what is known as the human spirit; the mind is its
essential quality. These endowments have enabled humanity to build
civilizations and to prosper materially. But such accomplishments alone
have never satisfied the human spirit, whose mysterious nature inclines it
towards transcendence, a reaching towards an invisible realm, towards the
ultimate reality, that unknowable essence of essences called God. The
religions brought to mankind by a succession of spiritual luminaries have
been the primary link between humanity and that ultimate reality, and have
galvanized and refined mankind's capacity to achieve spiritual success
together with social progress.

No serious attempt to set human affairs aright, to achieve world peace,
can ignore religion. Man's perception and practice of it are largely the
stuff of history. An eminent historian described religion as a "faculty of
human n