From that time on, there has been further extension of the appreciation of the sacredness of life and of the consciousness of moral obligation toward other human beings. We are far from the end of the path. Our sympathies are still limited by accidents of time and place, race and color; but we have gone far enough to see what the end would be, were we to reach it: a sympathy so wide, an appreciation of the sacredness of life so universal, that each of us would feel the joy or sorrow of every other human being, alive to-day or to be alive to-morrow, as something like his own. Moreover, in all civilized society, we have gone far enough to renounce the right to private vengeance and adjustment of quarrels: we live under established courts of law, with organized civil force to carry out their judgments. This gives relative peace and security, and a general, if imperfect, application of the moral law. V THE PRESENT STATE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS The astounding anomaly of modern civilization is the way we have lagged behind in applying to groups and nations of men the moral laws, universally recognized as binding over individuals. For instance, about twenty years ago we coined and used widely the phrase, "soulless corporation," to designate our great combinations of capital in industry and commerce. Why was that phrase used so widely? The answer is illuminating: we took it for granted that an individual employer would treat his artisans to some extent as human beings and not merely as cog-wheels in a productive machine; but we also took it for granted that an impersonal corporation, where no individual was dominantly responsible, would regard its artisans merely as pieces of machinery, with no respect whatever for their humanity. The supreme paradox, however, is in the relation of nations: it is there that we have most amazingly lagged behind in applying the moral laws universally accepted in the relations of individuals. For instance, long before this War began we heard it proclaimed, even proudly, by certain philosophers, in more than one nation, that the state is the supreme spiritual unit, that there is no law higher than its interest, that the state makes the law and may break it at will. When a great statesman in Germany, doubtless in a moment of intense anger and irritation, used the phrase that has gone all across the earth, "_scrap of paper_," for a sacred treaty between nations, he was only making a pungent practical application of the philosophy in question.