n order, making
them clean and tidy, so that, joining together, we may go into the
presence of our common God and enter into a new covenant with Him."

The war will prove (even against our will) to have been the anvil upon
which will have been forged the unity of the European soul.

It is my hope that this intellectual communion will not be restricted to
the European peninsula, but will extend to Asia, to the two Americas,
and to the great islets of civilisation spread over the rest of the
globe. It is absurd that the nations of western Europe should pride
themselves upon the discovery of profound differences, at the very time
when they have never resembled one another more closely in merits and
defects; at a time when their thought and their literature are least
notable for distinctive characteristics; when everywhere there becomes
sensible a monotonous levelling of intelligence; when on all hands we
discern individualities that are dishevelled, threadbare, limp. I will
venture to say that all of them, with their united efforts, are
incompetent to give us the hope of that mental renovation to which the
world is entitled after this formidable convulsion. We must go to
Russia, which has doors thrown wide open towards the eastern world, for
there only will our faces be freshened by the new currents which are
blowing in every department of thought.

Let us widen the concept of humanism, dear to our forefathers, though
its meaning has been narrowed down to the signification of Greek and
Latin manuals. In every age, states, universities, academies, all the
conservative forces of the mind, have endeavoured to make humanism in
this narrower sense a dike against the onslaughts of the new spirit, in
philosophy, in morals, in aesthetics. The dike has burst. The framework
of a privileged culture has been broken. To-day we have to accept
humanism in its widest signification, embracing all the spiritual forces
of the whole world. What we need is, panhumanism.

* * * * *

It is our hope that this ideal, formulated here and there by a few
leading minds, or heralded by the foundation while the war is yet in
progress of centres for the study of universal civilisation,[85] shall
be boldly adopted as its ensign by the international academy, in the
foundation of which I hope (with Gerhard Gran) that Norway will take the
initiative.

I note that Gerhard Gran seems, like Professor Fredrik Stang, to limit