562 PROFESSOR LORIMER ON THE APPLICATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF 



to brinj? them in contact with realitv, or even to fix them down to a definite 

 sense. 



But is this despair of external organisation justified by the amount of experi- 

 ence which these fruitless efforts to realise it as yet afford ? Have we seen and 

 done enough to warrant us in handing it over finally to the limbo of unattainable 

 aspirations ? or are there not rather points of view in which, whilst no obstacle 

 that is insuperable in point of principle meets us, we ought to take courage from 

 the very magnitude and difficulty of the task ? 



Compared with the events that makeup the history of individual communities, 

 cosmopolitan phenomena manifest themselves very slowly — so slowly, indeed, 

 as to resemble the geological changes in the structure of the earth, rather than 

 the mechanical changes which the works of man effect on its surface. The fact 

 is one which all nations recognise in their ordinary speech, for we measure the 

 progress of nations by years, or, at most, by centuries, whilst we distribute the 

 history of mankind, on a wider scale, into Eras. But the tardiness of these 

 greater social operations is a fact, the bearing of which on our present subject is 

 very little regarded. We are startled, perhaps, when it occurs to us that it is 

 only about sixty years since the Holy Roman Empire ceased to be, in name, 

 the central institution of our own Europe. Sixty years is within the memory of 

 man ; and we should certainly look for some traces, in our present condition, of 

 the influences of an Universal Monarchy by divine right, which had existed so 

 recently. But when we are told that, for all practical purposes, the Holy 

 Roman Empire perished two, or perhaps three centuries earlier — that it received 

 its death-blow at the Reformation, and finally expired during the Thirty Years' 

 War, leaving nothing but its shadow on the earth— we thoughtlessly hand it 

 over to a previous stage of political existence, almost as if the sphere of its 

 action had been on another planet. But what are two or three centuries in the 

 history of the world ? Compare them with the age of that very Empire, whether 

 we take it from the battle of Pharsalia, or from the foundation of the Frankish 

 Monarchy ! Or, again, the life of any single Greek State was comparatively 

 short. Sparta was regarded as a wonder of old age ; and Sparta lasted, I think, 

 only some 700 years. But if we take the Era of Greek influence, or even of the 

 preponderance of Greek institutions, we must begin before Homer and come 

 down to Roman times. 



It is the same if we take the periods when the hegemony of the historical 

 world was in Shemitic, and Egyptian hands. 



Now if, in place of measuring the period during which the modern world has 

 been attempting to shape itself anew, by the brief periods required for the growth 

 and decay of national institutions, we compare it to those in which organisations 

 of a world-wide character have been developed, we shall see reason to pause 

 before we pronounce a confident opinion on the possibility or impossibility of so 



