human society is now approaching. Unity of family, of tribe, of
city-state, and nation have been successively attempted and fully
established. World unity is the goal towards which a harassed humanity is
striving. Nation-building has come to an end. The anarchy inherent in
state sovereignty is moving towards a climax. A world, growing to
maturity, must abandon this fetish, recognize the oneness and wholeness of
human relationships, and establish once for all the machinery that can
best incarnate this fundamental principle of its life."

All contemporary forces of change validate this view. The proofs can be
discerned in the many examples already cited of the favourable signs
towards world peace in current international movements and developments.
The army of men and women, drawn from virtually every culture, race and
nation on earth, who serve the multifarious agencies of the United
Nations, represent a planetary "civil service" whose impressive
accomplishments are indicative of the degree of co-operation that can be
attained even under discouraging conditions. An urge towards unity, like a
spiritual springtime, struggles to express itself through countless
international congresses that bring together people from a vast array of
disciplines. It motivates appeals for international projects involving
children and youth. Indeed, it is the real source of the remarkable
movement towards ecumenism by which members of historically antagonistic
religions and sects seem irresistibly drawn towards one another. Together
with the opposing tendency to warfare and self-aggrandizement against
which it ceaselessly struggles, the drive towards world unity is one of
the dominant, pervasive features of life on the planet during the closing
years of the twentieth century.

The experience of the Baha'i community may be seen as an example of this
enlarging unity. It is a community of some three to four million people
drawn from many nations, cultures, classes and creeds, engaged in a wide
range of activities serving the spiritual, social and economic needs of
the peoples of many lands. It is a single social organism, representative
of the diversity of the human family, conducting its affairs through a
system of commonly accepted consultative principles, and cherishing
equally all the great outpourings of divine guidance in human history. Its
existence is yet another convincing proof of the practicality of its
Founder's vision of a united wor