88 CREATIVE INVOLUTION 



Yea, Manhood hath a wider span 

 And larger privilege of life than man. 



LOWELL: The Commemoration Ode. 



" So long as a common crowd-compelling emotion binds 

 into one any number of otherwise independent crowds, 

 war will not arise between them; and this is the only 

 force by which war can be banished. If the whole 

 world were to be thus united unto a single overcrowd, 

 war would cease, so long as that union of crowds lasted ; 

 and that would be so long and so long only as a single 

 ideal animated in common a number of previously inde- 

 pendent crowds, large enough to impose it upon all the 

 rest, if necessary by overwhelming force. Armageddon 

 will be the last battle between the last two overcrowds 

 into which the world will some day consolidate, and that 

 battle is still doubtless far away in the depths of the 

 future. When it has been fought the ideal of the victors 

 will be called ' good/ and that of the vanquished ' evil/ 

 or in the language of the first prophet that foretold it, it 

 will be a battle between Christ and Antichrist. After it 

 there will be peace on earth so long as the overcrowd 

 endures. 



. . . Internal peace follows but does not cause the for- 

 mation of an overcrowd, and so too righteousness arises 

 in an organised and healthy society but does not, as 

 an ideal to be attained, cause the formation of such a 

 society on any world-embracing scale; and that not- 

 withstanding that it has been preached and propagated 

 by enthusiastic generations of excellent men, sacrificing 

 their lives in the endeavour to extend it throughout the 

 world. Similarly the possession of a common humanity 

 has not amounted to very much as an international 



