e reached
out from country to country, and from zone to zone, just as a child's
interests as he grows to manhood expand from the home to the community
and from the community to the nation.

The idea of the social solidarity of all peoples is still new. Ever
since the original divergence of population from its home nest, when
groups became strange and hostile to one another because of mountain
and forest barriers, changing languages, and occasionally clashing
interests, the tendency of the peoples was to grow apart. But for a
century past the tendency has been changing from divergence to
convergence, from ignorance and distrust of one another to
understanding, sympathy, and good-will, from independence and
ruthlessness to interdependence and co-operation. Numerous agencies
have brought this about--some physical like steam and electricity,
some economic like commerce and finance, some social like travel and
the interchange of ideas through the press, some moral and religious
like missions and international organizations for peace. The history
of a hundred years has made it plain that nations cannot live in
isolation any more than individuals can, and that the tendency toward
social solidarity must be the permanent tendency if society is to
exist and prosper, even though civilization and peace may be
temporarily set back for a generation by war.

350. =The Principle of Adaptation vs. Conflict.=--This New World life
is not unnatural, though it has been slow in coming. A human being is
influenced by his physical needs and desires, his cultivated habits,
his accumulated interests, the customs of the people to whom he
belongs, and the conditions of the environment in which he finds
himself. While a savage his needs, desires, and interests are few, his
habits are fixed, his relations are simple and local; but when he
begins to take on civilization his needs multiply, his habits change,
and his relations extend more widely. The more enlightened he becomes
the greater the number of his interests and the more points of contact
with other people. So with every human group. The process of social
development for a time may intensify conflict, but there comes a time
when it is made clear to the dullest mind that conflict must give way
to mutual adaptation. No one group, not even a supernation, can have
everything for itself, and for the sake of the world's comfort and
peace it will be a decided social gain when that principle receiv