They are not insignificant, as we know to our cost. But by dwelling on the things of greater moment and solidity, we train ourselves and others to reduce the elements of discord to their true proportion and allay the storm. The progress of a united mankind is thus an ideal, slowly realizing itself in time. But its realization is quickened and rendered wider and more beneficent, the more we think of it and believe in it. A blow comes, such as the present war, and seems to shatter the whole picture which so many hands have limned and so many eyes admired. Those who have followed its growth through the ages, know well that no such blow can finally destroy a living growth or even go very deep in injuring its features. It is surely a commonplace that in proportion as western populations, from statesmen downwards, are animated by sentiments of comradeship which arise from considerations such as these, the danger of war must diminish and the possibilities of fruitful common action increase. Yet there is probably no country in Europe where any deliberate attempt is made to instruct the people in ideas which would most surely broaden their sympathies and lay the foundations of peace. The argument takes us back for a moment to the essay on education. We left off there at a point where the old unity based on Greco-Roman culture was seen to be disappearing in a confused mass of new studies, partly suggested by modern languages and history, still more by the growth of science and the application of science to the problems of contemporary life. It may well be that in this conception of humanity, the co-operation of mankind in a growing structure of thought, we shall ultimately find the _idee-mere_ under which all the other subordinate ideas in education may be grouped and inspired. This might take place if the notion were grasped in no narrow sense, but so broadly that all human thought, religion, and philosophy, art as well as science, might find their justification in it. The advantage of putting the educational issue first has been already indicated. We can all get to work on it at once for ourselves, and it is a far more fundamental and, in some respects, easier thing to introduce a new idea into the minds of others than to alter the boundaries and political conditions of States. If we once achieved a general atmosphere of co-operation and goodwill in the world, the practical problems would be already more than half solved.