Men are radically alike in the way they meet danger and death, in their sentiment and in their laughter, in their endurance, their passions, their self-sacrifice, their selfishness, their superstitions, and their gratitude. They are radically divided by possession, or not, of that extra sensitiveness to proportion, form, colour, sound, which we call the sense of beauty. Would there still be war in a world the most of whose dwellers had the sense of beauty? I think not. And they who have it, so few by comparison, are tragically compelled to live and bear their part in this hell, created by a world of which they are not. These two kinds of men shade subtly the one into the other; but the division is real, for all that—the bristles on the backs of each true specimen on either side of the line rise at sight of the other sort. And the war with its toil and hardships, its common humanity, deaths and dangers and sacrifices shared, will not bring them one jot nearer one to the other. Is there evidence for thinking that a sense of beauty is more common than it was? I am not sure. But there is certainly no chance that the sense of beauty can increase within measurable time, so as to give its possessors a majority. No chance that wars will cease from that reason. The little world of beauty-lovers will for many ages yet, perhaps always, be pitifully in tow, half-drowned by the following surge of the big insensitive world when it loses for a time what little feeling for harmony it has, and goes full speed ahead. § 7. Some argue earnestly that what really restrains and regulates the conduct of individuals is not force, but the general sense of decency, the public opinion of the community; and that the same rule applies to nations. In other words, that there is no reason why inter-State morality should be different from that prevailing amongst the individuals within a State. This argument neglects to perceive, first: That the public opinion of a community is, in reality, latent force; that in a real community “Right is Might,” up to a certain point. And, secondly: That there is as yet no community within which the nations dwell. An individual cannot pursue rank egotism to the complete overriding of his neighbours without knowing that those neighbours can and will give concrete expression to their resentment and suppress him. This latent force is at the back of all State-law, and of all public opinion, which is but State-law unwritten. The essence of its efficacy is the fact that individuals do live in community, each one perceiving with the non-rampant part of him that the rest are right in squashing his rampancy, since life in community would soon be impossible if they did not. He consents, subconsciously, to being squashed when he is rampant, because he recognizes himself to be part of a whole.