430 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



certain of my desires in him, and the recognition of a conflict between 

 certain of my desires and certain of his. The spirit of union thus 

 engenders three j)urposes: a purpose to partake in admirations, a pur- 

 pose to impart them, a purpose to reconcile them. Were two minds in 

 perfect union, each would be leader in the pursuit of its own inde- 

 pendent purposes, each a cordial second to the independent purposes 

 of the other, and each ready to settle their conflicts of purpose by any 

 means which a S3^mpathetic understanding of the purposes of the other 

 would sanction, and only by such means. So a Christian and a 

 Buddhist, had each a sympathetic grasp of the other's faith, might seek, 

 the one to give, the other to receive, that joy in the Lord which 

 Buddhism has lacked, and that interest in the fate of the whole animate 

 creation which historical Christianity has lacked. So Eussia, China 

 and Mongolia, were the mind of each open to the mind of the others — 

 a supposition still extravagant between any peoples — might weigh be- 

 tween them the question whether in the interest of all three Mongolia 

 should remain imder Chinese suzerainty, accept Eussian rule, or become 

 autonomous. 



The spirit of union does not exclude the possibility that the end 

 of a discussion between the parties may be disagreement, and change 

 them from co-workers into opponents. But opponents each responsive 

 to the interests of the other would fight, not for their own interests 

 solely, but for what each believed to be the interests of both. This 

 alone is righteous war. The saying of Benjamin Franklin: "There 

 never was a good war or a bad peace" — was a pardonable exaggera- 

 tion; but we make it a falsehood when we interpret it to mean that 

 there never can be a good war or a bad peace. The spirit of union, 

 which is the spirit of good will, aims at peace, but only in the interest 

 of all ; and may inexorably demand war, also in the interest of all. 



To the lasting honor of this nation, the United States have been the 

 first to enter into treaties embodying this third reqviisite of cultivated 

 relations with other peoples. However infrequent the use of such 

 machinery of discussion in advance of war, it will not rust ingloriously, 

 for it is made of a metal that rust can not corrupt. Ko other ma- 

 chinery, thanks to man's inventiveness, is needed to-day by the spirit 

 of union. The freedom of intercourse between nations of the modern 

 world in itself provides for the satisfaction of the two other impulses 

 which make up the spirit of union — the impulse to offer to others our 

 share, and to gain from them their share in the world's ideals. 



To which of these two spirits — empire, or union — does the future 

 belong? To the spirit of union, for a reason partly psychological and 

 partly mathematical. Conquests unite the conquered against the con- 

 queror; and combinations tend to be stronger than individuals. Minds 

 being what they are and numbers being what they are, a man is apt 



