386 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



aims at destruction only so far as is necessary to the removal 

 of barriers by which its operation is limited. It is as much 

 concerned for the extension of corporate responsibility as 

 for the free self-development of the individual ; but the 

 social order which it seeks is that of a higher organisation 

 in which differences are not obliterated, but preserved. 

 Similarly it holds the unity of the human race for a 

 principle which transcends all differences and rivalries of 

 nations, whence its persistent opposition to warfare ; but it 

 has no less often h^en the champion of nationality because 

 it recognises that the problem is to make divergent types 

 contribute to a vast harmony, not to reduce them to the 

 dead uniformity of a bureaucratic machine-world. Hence 

 politically its problem is on the one hand to create a state 

 which, without derogation to present freedom, shall be a 

 true community with no outcast or disinherited class ; on 

 the other, to make each state part of one greater com- 

 munity in which without loss of national vitality there 

 would be an overruling sense of the common human 

 heritage. 1 speak only of its efforts, and do not here 

 attempt to measure its success. 



9. But there is another aspect of the humanitarian spirit/ 

 of which it will be well for our purposes to form some 

 conception, however imperfect. Its doctrine, as we have 

 put it, is that a man is to be judged by his worth as a man. 

 Properly speaking, it would carry this conception a step 

 further, and insist that moral and social values themselves 

 are to be measured and estimated in accordance with the 

 requirements and possibilities of human nature. The im- 

 portance of this position is that current doctrines of right 

 and wrong and the current estimate of comparative values 

 may diverge very greatly from what is best suited to the 

 normal development of the human species. For this diverg- 

 ence there are several reasons. In the first place, we have 

 seen that the moral standards of a people are evolved in 

 correspondence with the practical needs of that people. 

 They must accord with the social structure assumed under 

 pressure of that necessity. Clearly such necessities may 

 be of a temporary character, and they may be such as to 

 stunt or distort the social growth. Now the influence of 



