Span the mountains and intervening valleys with railroads and
lines of telegraph, and every wire and rail assumes the dignity of a
social and political power in the bonds of an indissoluble unity.
If there be so little to create apprehension for the future, may we not
rationally hope that the diminution of war, if not its ultimate
extinction, is one of the promises of political unity?
Great, strong, noble men--those who are great and noble in all the
elements of their nature--such are never pugilists, and never fight: it
is those of distorted and defective development--those who have not
completeness and integrality within themselves, that are turbulent and
break the peace.
Another value of comprehensive unity is that only in great cooeperative
combinations of mankind can the _individual man_ find the fullest
expression for all the faculties of his nature. There is no unity
proper--no organization--in savage society; and life there is very
simple, with little variety of expression and little enjoyment. As man
becomes cultivated his wants increase, and he becomes a more social
being. His happiness becomes more and more dependent on others; hence
arise societies and organizations of various kinds. The more cultivated
any people and the more diversified their wants, the more various do
their relations become, and the more extensive their combinations.
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