BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 95 



lem is becoming increasingly pressing for the human 

 race, since the time is in sight when the whole habit- 

 able area of the globe will be colonized, up to a cer- 

 tain level of density and efficiency, by members of 

 the more advanced races. Biologically speaking, it 

 is perfectly clear that some co-operative system, in- 

 volving federation in one form or another, is the 

 proper system to adopt; and that the "world-state" 

 — not necessarily organized after the plan of our pres- 

 ent highly specialized nationalist-industrialist states, 

 which appear happily to represent only a temporary 

 phase of evolution, but none the less an organic real- 

 ity, a co-operative unit — that the "world-state" is not 

 merely a figment of unpractical dreamers, but an 

 obviously desirable aim for humanity. Kant, a cen- 

 tury and a half ago even, had seen clearly enough 

 that some universal society was a necessity for the 

 unfolding of human possibility; and had gone further 

 and pointed out that there were indications of a 

 movement of civilization in that direction. In our 

 time, this movement has been retarded by the ex- 

 traordinary and mushroom growth of National- 

 ism, in which to the average man his "Country" 

 (really Nation) has become his most real God. In 

 the last hundred years, Nationalism has usurped the 

 place of Religion as the most important super-indi- 

 vidual interest of individuals — has indeed in some 

 sense become a religion. It is leading the world into 

 an impasse, as do all incomplete and partial concep- 

 tions; but, in the Hague Court and the League of 



