nd which they do only because they are in the grip of forces alien
to their own nature. We have overestimated Progress by thinking only of
what is happening inside each of the States. We have forgotten to
consider the bearing of the States to one another, which remains on a
level lower than that of individuals.

The impression has gone abroad that the nations of the world need to
take _only one step_ from the position where they now stand to
accomplish the final unity of all mankind. Taking any one of these
nations--our own for example--we can trace the steps by which the
warring elements within it have become reconciled, until finally there
has emerged that vast unitary corporation--the British Empire. So with
all the others. What more is required therefore than one step further in
the same direction, to join up all the States into a single world State.
But I am bound to think we are too hasty in treating the unity of
mankind as needing only one step more. It is not so easy as all that.
When you study the process by which unity has been brought about in the
various European communities you find that motives of conquest and
corresponding motives of defence have had a great deal to do with it.
Germany, for example, was built up and now holds together as a fighting
unit. Whether Germany and the other States would still maintain their
cohesion when they were no longer fighting units, and when the motives
of conquest and defence were no longer in operation, is a question on
which I should not like to dogmatize either way. Certainly we have no
right to assume offhand that the unifying process which has given the
nations the mass cohesion and efficiency they require for holding their
own against enemy States would still remain in full power when there
were no longer any enemy States to be considered.

But what do we mean by Progress?

Progress may be defined as that process by which a thing advances from a
less to a more complete state of itself. Now whether this process is a
desirable one or not obviously depends on the nature of the thing which
is progressing. Take the largest and most inclusive of all things--the
whole world. And now suppose philosophy to have proved that the world,
the whole world, is advancing from a less to a more complete state of
itself--which as a matter of fact is what the doctrine of evolution
claims to have proved. Ought I to rejoice in this discovery? Will it
give me satisfaction? That clearly