Few persons who have not given special study to the subject appear to grasp adequately the extent of variation which mere geographical division and the exposure to extremely unlike physical conditions produces in human individuals and in human societies, demanding a corresponding difference in government and institutions. Were two infants removed from each other at birth, the one to be brought up in Finland and the other in India, the mere climatic and physical differences would, at the end of forty years, have rendered them highly dissimilar both in physical constitutions and in many intellectual and material wants, while their descendants at the end of six generations would certainly represent distinct human varieties, for which distinct laws and institutions would be requisite. The effects of geographical severance, dissimilarities in climate and physical surroundings, can never for a moment be lost sight of, in dealing with national questions, without fatal results.
Even in the United States of America, in spite of its territorial continuity and the more or less homogeneous nature of its mixed population and the strongly autonomous structure of its separate states, it is still almost open to question (though this is a matter only to be dealt with by one who has long and closely studied the constitution of the United States from within) whether the political life of that vast mass of humanity might not be healthier, its vitality greater, and the individuality of the separate citizens more strengthened, if the whole were divided into two or even three federal bodies instead of one. This at least is certain, that if ever America be tempted to lay aside her great fundamental principle of Equal Federation and geographical continuity, and to adopt in her corporate capacity the principle of Imperial rule by dominating and subjecting distant lands and alien peoples whom she does not absorb into her body politic on equal terms, then she will have introduced into her national life an element which will first morally, and finally materially, disorganize her and in the end lead to the break-up of her great and at present virile body politic; and the world will have to look elsewhere for the most advanced type of social evolution.
Napoleon attempted to unite Europe by breaking down its states with iron and re-cementing them with blood under the centralized control of France. His attempt failed, as all Imperialistic attempts must ultimately fail which seek to accomplish by force a union which can only healthily come into being through internal necessity and the gradual co-adaptation of ages. And if across the years the dim outline of the Confederate States of Europe may already be seen looming by the attentive eye, it is certain that not the Imperial nightmare, but the noble dream of a free and equal union, will find its realization in that confederacy.
If one turns further from the consideration of the separate states and organizations as they exist to-day to the far wider inquiry, what is the desirable and possible ultimate form of organization for the entire human race? it has always appeared to us that there can be but one answer.
Probably no powerful and far-seeing mind entertains as possible, and still less regards as desirable were it possible, the existence in the future of a world in which all the interesting and many-sided varieties into which the human race has blossomed during its evolution on earth are cut down and supplanted by any one single variety, more particularly if that variety be not one to which the far-seeing and powerful mind belongs! A Frenchized, Germanized, Russianized, Englishized, Chineseized globe is a nightmare, perhaps only seriously conceived of as a possible reality in the mind of the ignorant man in the street of all nations, eaten up, as such minds are, by a stupendous national egoism, such as might be entertained by an ant who believed his noble ant heap would ultimately cover the whole globe. The ideal of a one-nation-dominated globe can as little satisfy a broad human intelligence as the ideal of a zoological garden populated solely by hippopotami would satisfy a broadly scientific one.
To ourselves it has always appeared inevitable that, if continued growth and development of the race are to be maintained, and humanity to blossom into its fairest and most harmonious development possible on earth, progress must always necessarily be along two lines. On the other hand, not only must the independence and freedom of the separate individuals advance, but the independence and individuality of each human variety must continue to increase; while, on the one hand, a certain broad sympathy, rising from an interchange of material and intellectual benefits and a perception of the profound unity which underlies all human diversity, must draw together the different human varieties and races; as to-day the recognized bonds of the family and the nation unite diverse individuals. As the loftiest form of individual relationship is not the forcible bond which binds the slave and the animal to its master, nor even the relation of individuals identical in blood or character, but the noble companionship of persons wholly distinct, equally free, equally independent, complementing by their diversity each other's existence; so the ideal of international and racial relationships is not one of subjection and dominance or of identity, but of complementary interaction.
The ultimate chant of the human race on earth is not to be conceived of as a monotone chanted on one note by one form of humanity alone, but rather a choral symphony chanted by all races and all nations in diverse tones on different notes in one grand complex harmony. The vision of the Hebrew prophet when he cried out that the lamb and the wolf should yet lie down together and the weaned child put its hand in the cockatrice's den is the negation of the desire that the lion, having consumed the lamb, should lie alone switching his tail on his sand heap, and the cockatrice, having stung the young child to death, should peer forth from the door of its den on a landscape he had rendered desolate. Not in the extermination of earth's varied races, or the dominance of any one over all, or the annihilation of those complexities and varieties in humanity which form its beauty, not in a universal Imperial rule, but in a free and equal federation of all, lies the ultimate goal of humanity, which, being reached, alone can its fairest proportion be attained.
It is difficult to believe that the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century will have passed away before that wave of exploitation and destruction, vomited forth by the nations of Europe, led by England in her drunken orgie of Imperialism, based on capitalism, and which now threatens to sweep across the earth, disrupting and destroying its peoples and their individuality, will have met with the command, "Hereto shalt thou come and no further!" and the drenched peoples of earth, after their blood bath, shall again lift up their heads.