awareness
of the fact that we have actually held them for true and that from time
immemorial they have poured their virus into the heart of ethics,
economics, politics and government throughout the world; we have seen not
only that the beliefs are false but that their falseness is due to a
blunder of the most fundamental kind--the blunder of mixing dimensions or
confusing types. As already said, the fourth one of the mentioned tasks is
that of tracing, if we can, the blunder's deadly effects both in human
history and in the present status of the world. We have just reached the
conclusion that this task cannot be _fully_ performed; for there can be no
doubt, as we have seen, that, if the blunder had not been committed and
persisted in, the world would now possess a civilization so far advanced,
so rich in the spiritual fruits of time and toil, as to be utterly beyond
our present power to conceive or imagine it.

But, though we cannot perform the task fully, our plight is far from
hopeless. The World War has goaded us into thinking as we never thought
before. It has constrained us to think of realities and especially to
think of the supreme reality--the reality of Man. That is why the great
Catastrophe marks the close of humanity's childhood. The period has been
long and the manner of its end is memorable forever--a sudden, flaming,
world-wide cataclysmic demonstration of fundamental ignorance--human
ignorance of human nature. It is just that tragic _demonstration_, brutal
as an earthquake, pitiless as fate or famine, that gives us ground for
future hope. It has forced us to think of realities and it is thought of
reality that will heal the world. And so I say that these days, despite
their fear and gloom, are the beginning of a new order in human
affairs--the order of permanent peace and swift advancement of human weal.
For we know at length what human beings are, and the knowledge can be
taught to men and women and children by home and school and church and
press throughout the world; we know at length, and we can teach the world,
that man is neither an animal nor a miraculous mixture of angel and beast;
we know at length, and we can teach, that, throughout the centuries, these
monstrous misconceptions have made countless millions mourn and that they
are doing so to-day, for, though we cannot compute the _good_ of which
they have _deprived_ mankind, we can trace the dark ramifications of their
positive _evil_ in a thous