of States have followed more widely coöperative activities, more comprehensive and hence more reasonable principles of judgment and outlook. The individual has been emancipated from his relative submergence in the local and fixed group, and set upon his own feet, with varied fields of activity open to him in which to try his powers, and furnished with principles of judging conduct and projecting ideals which in theory, at least, are as broad as the possibilities of humanity itself.

PART I

THE NATURE OF THE STATE

CHAPTER II

PRELIMINARY DEFINITIONS AND DISTINCTIONS

10. Necessity for definitions and distinctions. Amos gives the following reasons for the misuse of political terms:

There are some special reasons why language is peculiarly subject in political speech and discussion to flux and vacillation of import, and therefore, why the processes of definition and explanation are peculiarly difficult. In the first place, political terms are largely in use among classes who either are habitually inexact in their use of language or who have a positive motive, good, bad or indifferent, to be inexact themselves or to encourage inexactness in others. Popular speech is at every moment handling the common words which are, of necessity, pressed into the service of political speculation and debate. These words, therefore, carry with them, wherever they go, the looseness and variability of meaning they contract in the market place and by the domestic fireside. . .

But political terms do not merely suffer in fixity of meaning from the abuses common to words in familiar popular use. They are, furthermore, peculiarly exposed to a special liability to abuse from the practice of rhetorical argument conducted either on the public platform or in the popular legislature or in the columns of the public journal. The terms republic, democracy, aristocracy, centralization, liberty, self-government, and the like are all capable of a favorable or unfavorable use, and it can only be on a fair examination of all the circumstances of the case to which they purport to apply that the sense in which they are employed in any special case can be determined. It, unfortunately, is often for the apparent and momentary interest of the speaker or writer to wrest the meanings of political terms and to hide from the hearer or reader one of its undoubted significations, while forcing into undue prominence another....

In the second place, political terms are liable to distortion from a cause which is the opposite of the one just described. For legal, diplomatic, and certain administrative purposes, political terms are often employed with an inflexible rigidity of meaning which is at once diverse from their lax popular use and also from the less rigid though definite signification needed by the requirements of a true political science. Thus it comes about that while the terms of political science are peculiarly exposed to abuse and vacillation through conversational laxity, they are likewise exposed to the risk of ambiguities owing to the simultaneous functions they perform in the technical language of law, diplomacy, and administration.

In the third place, political terms suffer in a peculiar degree from a cause which is the enemy of all fixity of meaning in terms, incessant, though imperceptible, changes in the nature of the things and facts which they are used to denote. History is full of illustrations of this phenomenon, and sometimes the consequence is even widespread misunderstandings. This is especially the case when the people of one country try to acquaint themselves with the political condition, wants, and controversies of another country.

I. NATION: NATIONALITY

11. The essentials of nationality. According to Willoughby, the influences that create a spirit of national unity are as follows: 1 In Germany the word "People" has primarily and predominantly a political signification, as denoting a body of individuals organized under a single government; while the term "Nation" is reserved for a collection of individuals united by ethnic or other bonds, irrespective of political combination. According to this use "a Nation is an aggregate of men speaking the same language, having the same customs, and endowed with certain moral qualities which distinguish them from all other groups of like nature. . . .”

That which welds a body of individuals into a national unity is no rigid political control, but ethnic and other factors largely sentimental or psychological in character. Now when we say that it is these influences of race, religion, custom, language, and history that create a Nation, we mean that from these sources springs the feeling or sentiment that binds together a community of people, and constitutes from them a Nation. Each of these factors invites the formation of a Nation, but no one of them compels it. The essential principle is the feeling that is the result 1 Copyright, 1896, by The Macmillan Company.

of one or more of these factors. Thus, as says Renan : A nation is a spiritual principle, resulting from the profound complications of history; a spiritual family, not a group determined by the configuration of the soil. . . . A Nation is, then, a great solidarity constituted by the sentiment of the sacrifices that have been made, and by those which the people are disposed to make. It supposes a past; it is, however, summed up in the present by a tangible fact: the consent, the clearly expressed desire of continuing the common life. . . . According to Mill, a portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and others — which make them coöperate with each other more willingly than with other people, desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be government by themselves, or a portion of themselves, exclusively." 1

९९

12. The idea of the nation. Numerous recent writers have emphasized the idea of the nation, and the importance of national unity and the influence of the national genius on political ideas and institutions. Burgess says:

Primarily and properly the word nation is a term of ethnology, and the concept expressed by it is an ethnologic concept. It is derived from the Latin nascor, and has reference, therefore, primarily to the relations of birth and race-kinship. . . . As an abstract definition, I would offer this: A population of an ethnic unity, inhabiting a territory of a geographic unity, is a nation.

There is, however, an objection to this definition. The nation as thus defined is the nation in perfect and completed existence, and this is hardly yet anywhere to be found. Either the geographic unity is too wide for the ethnic, or the ethnic is too wide for the geographic, or the distinct lines of the geographic unity partially fail, or some of the elements of the ethnic unity are wanting.

Further, the definition requires explanation. By geographic unity I mean a territory separated from other territory by high mountain ranges, or broad bodies of water, or impenetrable forests and jungles, or climatic extremes, such barriers as place, or did once place, great difficulties in the way of external intercourse and communication. By ethnic unity I mean a population having a common language and literature, a common tradition and history, a common custom and a common consciousness of rights and wrongs. Of these latter the most important element is that of a common speech. It is the basis of all the 1 "Representative Government,” chap. xvi.

rest. Men must be able to understand each other before a common view and practice can be attained. It will be observed that I do not include common descent and sameness of race as qualities necessary to national existence. It is true that they contribute powerfully to the development of national unity; but a nation can be developed without them, and in spite of the resistance which a variety in this respect frequently offers. Undoubtedly, in earliest times, sameness of race was productive of a common language and a common order of life; but the early mixing of races by migration, conquest and intermarriage eliminated, in large degree, the influence of this force. Territorial neighborhood and intercourse soon became its substitutes. In the modern era, the political union of different races under the leadership of a dominant race results almost always in national assimilation. Thus, although the nation is primarily a product of nature and of history, yet political union may greatly advance its development, as political separation may greatly retard it. Sameness of religion was once a most potent power in national development, but the modern principle of the freedom of religion has greatly weakened its influence.

Where the geographic and ethnic unities coincide, or very nearly coincide, the nation is almost sure to organize itself politically, - to become a state. There can, however, be political organization without this. The nation must pass through many preliminary stages in its development before it reaches the political, and meanwhile other forces will control in larger degree the formation of the state. Some forms of political organization are even based upon national hostility between different parts of the population subject to them. . . .

On the other hand, where several nations are embraced within the same state, and the national feeling and consciousness rise to strength and clearness, there is danger of political dissolution. The mere mixture of a variety of nationality over the same territory will not, however, necessarily have this effect. This more frequently leads to a centralization of government. . .

Lastly, a nation may be divided into two or more states on account of territorial separation, as, for example, the English and the North American, the Spanish-Portuguese and the South American, - and one of the results of this division will be the development of new and distinct national traits.

From these reflections, I trust that it will be manifest to the mind of every reader how very important it is to distinguish clearly the nation, both in word and idea, from the state; preserving to the former its ethnic signification, and using the latter exclusively as a term of law and politics.