a thing being good, you cannot prevent it being worth fighting for.
It is impossible to prevent a possible conflict of civilizations,
because it is impossible to prevent a possible conflict between ideals.
If there were no longer our modern strife between nations, there would
only be a strife between Utopias. For the highest thing does not tend
to union only; the highest thing, tends also to differentiation.
You can often get men to fight for the union; but you can
never prevent them from fighting also for the differentiation.
This variety in the highest thing is the meaning of the fierce patriotism,
the fierce nationalism of the great European civilization.
It is also, incidentally, the meaning of the doctrine of the Trinity.

But I think the main mistake of Mr. Wells's philosophy is a somewhat
deeper one, one that he expresses in a very entertaining manner
in the introductory part of the new Utopia. His philosophy in some
sense amounts to a denial of the possibility of philosophy itself.
At least, he maintains that there are no secure and reliable
ideas upon which we can rest with a final mental satisfaction.
It will be both clearer, however, and more amusing to quote
Mr. Wells himself.

He says, "Nothing endures, nothing is precise and certain
(except the mind of a pedant). . . . Being indeed!--there is no being,
but a universal becoming of individualities, and Plato turned his back
on truth when he turned towards his museum of specific ideals."
Mr. Wells says, again, "There is no abiding thing in what we know.
We change from weaker to stronger lights, and each more powerful
light pierces our hitherto opaque foundations and reveals
fresh and different opacities below." Now, when Mr. Wells
says things like this, I speak with all respect when I say