14 - How matters are managed

Summary

Said I: ‘How about your relations with foreign nations?’

‘I will not affect not to know what you mean,’ said he, ‘but I will tell you at once that the whole system of rival and contending nations which played so great a part in the “government” of the world of civilization has disappeared along with the inequality betwixt man and man in society.’

‘Does not that make the world duller?’ said I.

‘Why?’ said the old man.

‘The obliteration of national variety,’ said I.

‘Nonsense,’ he said, somewhat snappishly. ‘Cross the water and see. You will find plenty of variety: the landscape, the building, the diet, the amusements, all various. The men and women varying in looks as well as in habits of thought: the costume far more various than in the commercial period. How should it add to the variety or dispel the dulness, to coerce certain families or tribes, often heterogeneous and jarring with one another, into certain artificial and mechanical groups, and call them nations, and stimulate their patriotism – i.e. their foolish and envious prejudices?’

‘Well – I don't know how,’ said I.