HISTORICAL METHOD. 639 



affect tlie fundamental principle of the system of social union which iiap- 

 pened to exist ; nor threaten large portions of the community with the 

 subversion of that on which they had built their calculations, and with 

 which their hopes and aims had become identified. But when the ques- 

 tioning of these fundamental principles is (not the occasional disease, or 

 salutary medicine, but) the habitual condition of the body politic, and when 

 all the violent animosities are called forth, which spring naturally from such 

 a situation, the state is virtually in a position of civil war; and can never 

 long remain free from it in act and fact. 



" The third essential condition of stability in political society, is a strong 

 and active principle of cohesion among the members of the same commu- 

 nity or state. We need scarcely say that we do not mean nationality, in 

 the vulgar sense of the term ; a senseless antipathy to foreigners ; indiffer- 

 ence to the general welfare of the human race, or an unjust preference of 

 the supposed interests of our own country; a cherishing of bad peculiari- 

 ties because they are national, or a refusal to adopt what has been found 

 good by other countries. We mean a principle of sympathy, not of hostil- 

 ity; of union, not of separation. We mean a feeling of common interest 

 among those who live under the same government, and are contained with- 

 in the same natural or historical boundaries. We mean, that one part of 

 the community do not consider themselves as foreigners with regard to an- 

 other part; that they set a value on their connection — feel that they are 

 one people, that their lot is cast together, that evil to any of their fellow- 

 countrymen is evil to themselves, and do not desire selfishly to free them- 

 selves from their share of any common inconvenience by severing the con- 

 nection. How strong this feeling was in those ancient commonwealths 

 which attained any durable greatness, every one knows. How happily 

 Rome, in spite of all her tyranny, succeeded in establishing the feeling of a 

 common country among the provinces of her vast and divided empire, will 

 appear when any one who has given due attention to the subject shall take 

 the trouble to point it out. In modern times the countries which have had 

 that feeling in the strongest degree have been the most powerful countries : 

 England, France, and, in proportion to their territory and I'esourccs, Hol- 

 land and Switzerland ; while England in her connection with Ireland is one 

 of the most signal examples of the consequences of its absence. Every 

 Italian knows why Italy is under a foreign yoke; every German knows 

 what maintains despotism in the Austrian empire;* the evils of Spain flow 

 as much from the absence of nationality among the Spaniards themselves, 

 as from the presence of it in their relations with foreigners : while the cora- 

 pletest illustration of all is afforded by the republics of South America, 

 where the parts of one and the same state adhere so slightly together, that 

 no sooner does any province think itself aggrieved by the general govern- 

 ment than it proclaims itself a separate nation." 



§ 6. While the derivative laws of social statics are ascertained by an- 

 alyzing different states of society, and comparing them with one another, 

 without regard to the order of their succession, the consideration of the 

 successive order is, on the contrary, pi-edominant in the study of social 

 dynamics, of which the aim is to observe and explain the sequences of so- 

 cial conditions. This branch of the social science would be as complete as 

 it can be made, if every one of the leading general circumstances of each 



* Written and first published in 1840. 



