ture in the picture was of a triumphant city-state, Rome, gradually
subduing and embracing the world. Then for some thousand years the
picture was of a religious organization leading the civilized world, and
nationalities were only emerging as somewhat dim and ill-defined
figures. Then, with the rupture in the Church and the upspringing of
other religious bodies and forms of thought, national figures become
predominant in the scene, and attract nearly all the attention, which is
given, except by a few curious persons, to the study of history.
Nationalism, once in defect in Western Europe, has been for some time
in excess. The remedy is not directly to attack it, except in the case
in which it gave us no choice, but to supply the limiting and
controlling ideas. Of all these, science fits the case most exactly,
because, as science, it can know no distinction between French or
German, English or Russian. There is no French physics or German
chemistry, and if we are told that the Prussians have their own theory
of anthropology, based on the predominance of a particular type of skull
which other anthropologists dispute, we are quite sure that in that case
science has not yet said her last word.

We put physical science first because it contains the largest number of
certain and accepted laws. The further we get from mathematical
exactness the more liable we are to differences of opinion, which may,
as in the case of anthropology, cluster round some question of national
pique. But it would be easy to trace through all the sciences, and into
philosophy and religion, a growing unity of method and result before
which national differences often resolve themselves into a difference of
style. The style is the nation's, but the truth is mankind's.

We could not, indeed, be sure that if every one in Western Europe were a
trained scientist, wars would cease from the earth: certain professors
have taught us too well for that. But in so far as men come to recognize
that the great body of organized knowledge is a common possession, due
to the united efforts of different nations, and that it can only be
increased by joint action and may be increased to such a point that the
whole of life is a happier and nobler thing, so far they will be averse
to war. And in its various applications, to increasing production and
quickening communication, to lengthening life and healing sickness, to
protecting workers and cheapening food, men see the natu