n the other line of approach, the
study of the things on which men now agree without question, which they
have built up steadily with co-operating hands, the mental effect is
quite different. The opening vista leads us on, with growing admiration
and confidence in the unbreakable solidarity of mankind. We know that
Newton who completes Galileo, Maxwell who follows Laplace, Helmholtz who
uses the results of Joule, can have no conflicting jealousies. Here
quite obviously and indisputably all are fellow-workers, and before the
greatness of their work the passions of rival domination in material
things, the differences of national taste and habit, the quarrels of the
past or the future, appear contemptible and insignificant.

They are not insignificant, as we know to our cost. But by dwelling on
the things of greater moment and solidity, we train ourselves and others
to reduce the elements of discord to their true proportion and allay the
storm. The progress of a united mankind is thus an ideal, slowly
realizing itself in time. But its realization is quickened and rendered
wider and more beneficent, the more we think of it and believe in it. A
blow comes, such as the present war, and seems to shatter the whole
picture which so many hands have limned and so many eyes admired. Those
who have followed its growth through the ages, know well that no such
blow can finally destroy a living growth or even go very deep in
injuring its features.

It is surely a commonplace that in proportion as western populations,
from statesmen downwards, are animated by sentiments of comradeship
which arise from considerations such as these, the danger of war must
diminish and the possibilities of fruitful common action increase. Yet
there is probably no country in Europe where any deliberate attempt is
made to instruct the people in ideas which would most surely broaden
their sympathies and lay the foundations of peace.

The argument takes us back for a moment to the essay on education. We
left off there at a point where the old unity based on Greco-Roman
culture was seen to be disappearing in a confused mass of new studies,
partly suggested by modern languages and history, still more by the
growth of science and the application of science to the problems of
contemporary life. It may well be that in this conception of humanity,
the co-operation of mankind in a growing structure of thought, we shall
ultimately find the _idee-mere_ under which al