Note (return) — Chapter IV

But now that we can no longer use the range of our senses as a basis for calculating the possible area of the civilised State, there might seem to be no facts at all which can be used for such a calculation. How can we fix the limits of effective intercommunication by steam or electricity, or the area which can be covered by such political expedients as representation and federalism? When Aristotle wished to illustrate the relation of the size of the State to the powers of its citizens he compared it to a ship, which, he said, must not be too large to be handled by the muscles of actual men. 'A ship of two furlongs length would not be a ship at all.'[98] But the Lusitania is already not very far from a furlong and a half in length, and no one can even guess what is the upward limit of size which the ship-builders of a generation hence will have reached. If once we assume that a State may be larger than the field of vision of a single man, then the merely mechanical difficulty of bringing the whole earth under a government as effective as that of the United States or the British Empire has already been overcome. If such a government is impossible, its impossibility must be due to the limits not of our senses and muscles but of our powers of imagination and sympathy.