HISTORICAL MKTIIOD. 583 



on which they have built their calculations, and with which their hopes 

 and aims have become identified. But when the questioning of ihcHe 

 fundamental pnncij)le.s is (not an occasional disease;, but) the habitual 

 condition of the body politic ; and when all the violent animositi«ra aro 

 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 fad. 



" The third essential condition, which has existed in all durable politi- 

 cal societies, is a strong and active principle of nationality. We need 

 scarcely say that we do not mean a sen.seless antipathy to foreigners; 

 or a cherishing of absurd j)eculiarities because they are national ; or a 

 refusal to adopt what has been found good by other countries. In all 

 these senses, the nations which have had the strongest national spirit 

 have had the least nationality. We mean a principle of sympathy, not 

 of hostility; of union, not of separation. We mean a feeling of com- 

 mon interest among those who live under the same government, and 

 are contained within the same natural or historical boundaries. We 

 mean, that one pait of the community shall not consider themselves as 

 foreigners with regard to another part; that they shall cherish the tie 

 which holds them together ; shall feel that tlu-y are one people, that 

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

 evil to themselves, and that they cannot selfishly free themselves from 

 their share of any common inconvenience by severing the connexion. 

 How strong this feeling was in the ancient commonwealths every one 

 knows. How happily Rome, in spite of all her tyranny, succeeded 

 in establishing the feeling of a common counti-y 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 j)oint it out. 

 In modem 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 resources, Holland 

 and Switzerland; while England, in her connexion 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 completest illustration of all is afforded by the rejiublics of 

 South America, where the j)arts of one and the same state adhere so 

 slightly together, that no sooner does any province think itself ag- 

 grieved by the general government than it j)roclaims itself a separate 

 nation." 



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

 analyzing different states of society, and comparing them with one 

 another, without regard to the order of their succession ; the considera- 

 tion of the successive order is, on the contrary, pnjdominant in the 

 study of social dynamics, of which the aim is to observe and explain 

 the sequences of social conditions. This branch of the rt(x;ial science 

 would be as complete as it can be made, if every one of the leading 

 general circumstances of each generation were traced to its causes in 

 the generation immediately preceding. ]iut the conscnsux is 8<» (Com- 

 plete (especially in modern hislftry), thai in the filiation of one genor- 



