_(c)_ The contrast between humanity and mankind has always uttered itself through a dichotomous mode of expression--Jew and Gentile, Greek [1] and barbarian, Mussulman and infidel, Christian {331} and heathen, white civilisations and the black and yellow races. It will be noted at once that some of these divisions contradict each other, and this fact may suggest the probability that to every people its own life has seemed the crown of things, and the remainder of mankind only the remainder. Such a suggestion may have a real bearing on our problem, and we will return to it. In the meantime, however, it is plain that humanity [2] as an ethical idea is a type or a problem rather than a fact. It means certain qualities, at once realised in what we take to be the crown of the race, and including a sensibility to the claims of the race as such. Sensibility to the claims of the race as such, is least of all qualities common to the race as such. The respect of States and individuals for humanity is then, after all, in its essence, a duty to maintain a type of life, not general, but the best we know, which we call the most human, and in accordance with it to recognise and deal with the rights of alien individuals and communities. This conception is opposed to the treatment of all individual human beings as members of an identical community having identical capacities and rights. It follows our general conviction that not numbers but qualities determine the value of life. But qualities, of course, become self-contradictory if they fail to meet the demands imposed on them by numbers. And thus we recur to a suggestion noted {332} above. Every people, as a rule, seems to find contentment in its own type of life. This cannot contradict, for us, the imperativeness of our own sense of the best. But it may make us cautious as to the general theory of progress, and ready to admit that one type of humanity cannot cover the whole ground of the possibilities of human nature. Our action must, no doubt, be guided by what we can understand of human needs, and this must depend ultimately on our own type of life. But it makes a difference whether we start from the hypothesis that our civilisation as such stands for the goal of progress, or admit that there is a necessity for covering the whole ground of human nature. And it may be that, as the ground is covered, our States may go the way which others have gone, without, however, leaving things as they are. If the State, moreover, is not ultimate nor above criticism, no more is any given idea of humanity; and reference to “the interests of mankind” only names the problem, which is to find out what those interests are, in terms of human qualities to be realised.