It has been remarked that England has possessions in very many latitudes and longitudes of the world. Over these possessions a governing control is exercised, which control foreshadows the possibility of a government that shall control every country in all latitudes and longitudes. When it is remembered that the countries of Asia are practically as near Washington as California, there can be no argument deduced from distance against a common and world-wide administration of government. The broad assertion is made, that there is no argument against universal governmental administration, but that every possible argument urges all people to prepare for it as the thing of all things to be desired by them.
It only remains for some one of the great countries of the world to arrive at, or to approximate to, a perfect system of government that shall contain the elements and principles of sufficient inherent strength, to insure to that country the power which shall control the destinies of the world. From what has been said regarding the position of the United States, it must be admitted, that nearly all the natural advantages, as well as the general order of things, are on this side of the globe. If any conclusions naturally flow from the observation of the past tendencies in the order of nature, they are that the United States is destined to be the centre of a universal government.
The tendencies of government from earliest historic time have persistently been to universal sway. The systems and forms through which this tendency has been manifested have changed from time to time, as the circumstances that created them—the environment—the sum total of the governed—have changed. These systems will continue to be modified, until this tendency shall have opened such channels for itself, as will permit free and untrammeled action; until these channels shall have encircled the world, and its utmost limits shall have been attracted within the realm of its positive flow and negative reaction, and until the commanding magnetic influence that shall proceed from its central seat of power shall reach all subjects and find in their general heart an answering response of fidelity and confidence.
In such fidelity and confidence each and all can safely and earnestly devote themselves to the best aims and wisest purposes of life—to intellectual, moral and spiritual growth. In this general and universal pursuit the millennium, so long prophesied and prayed for, can alone be gained, through which reaching, the government of heaven can alone be administered on earth.
Government, then, will be no longer one of physical force, but of the more powerful control of wisdom, including, perhaps, modified forms of force. Caste will no longer be distinction regarding material position or possession, but in moral and spiritual position and intellectual possession. In such government and caste a true aristocracy can exist in the midst of a true democracy. All will be born free and entitled to the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in self-chosen paths, which alone is perfect equality. Perfect equality in the order of nature does not presuppose that all shall be alike, but it does presuppose that all shall be equal in the right to apply their natural or acquired talent according to the dictates of the power that governs them—the same as the flower and the tree follow their natural courses, and are equal, but not alike. As the lightning and the sunshine, the mountain and the river, the bird and the bee, the earthquake and the storm, follow their natural courses and tendencies under the government of the universal God, so shall the people follow theirs under a universal social government, when fashioned after the same general principles that obtain in the domain of nature. For
Honest nature’s voice shall give
The laws to man by which he’ll live.
It will be seen, then, that the philosophic formulæ that it has been demonstrated the evolution of matter conforms to, apply with equal force, effect and directness to the evolution of society, which is the fruit, so to speak, of the evolution of matter. The evolution of society, then, is “a continuous establishment of psychical relations within the community, in conformity to physical and psychical relations arising within the environment, during which both the community and the environment pass from a state of incoherent homogeneity to a state of coherent heterogeneity, and during which the constitutional units of the community become ever more distinctly individualized.” Thus it has been from the earliest existence of communities, and this formulæ applies to all communities, whether Assyrian or American.
The process of revolution in its ultimate effects brings about a perfect state of action and reaction in all the various productions of nature, by which they are first perfected and then destroyed. The process in society must also continue until an equilibrium shall have been attained between the governing power and the power governed. When this is reached its perpetual continuance will depend solely upon the perpetuity of that over which it acts, or upon continuous individual existence. Continuous existence does not belong to the kingdoms below man, but does to man, from the fact that inherent within his consciousness there is a persistent though utterly unexplainable and undefinable knowledge of continuous existence, which is forever independent of all the changeable circumstances of the purely material, and which represents in him that characteristic of Divine power exhibited everywhere in the universe which is forever beyond scrutiny and limitation.
This evidence of Divine power within the individual, then, is the distinction between man as the product of nature and all other products of nature; while the consciousness of its existence is the direct evidence to the understanding that as the Divine power is eternal, so must that within be, which partakes of it, or is made up of its essential attributes.