the past century, we can now see some of the causes that brought about
those storms. If we survey them with discerning eye, we soon begin to
see that, in the main, the cyclonic disturbances had their origins in
two great natural impulses of the civilised races of mankind. The first
of these forces is that great impulse towards individual liberty, which
we name Democracy; the second is that impulse, scarcely less mighty and
elemental, that prompts men to effect a close union with their kith and
kin: this we may term Nationality.

Now, it is true that these two forces have not led up to the last and
crowning phase of human development, as their enthusiastic champions at
one time asserted that they would; far from that, they are accountable,
especially so the force of Nationality, for numerous defects in the life
of the several peoples; and the national principle is at this very time
producing great and needless friction in the dealings of nations. Yet,
granting all this, it still remains true that Democracy and Nationality
have been the two chief formative influences in the political
development of Europe during the Nineteenth Century.

In no age of the world's history have these two impulses worked with so
triumphant an activity. They have not always been endowed with living
force. Among many peoples they lay dormant for ages and were only called
to life by some great event, such as the intolerable oppression of a
despot or of a governing caste that crushed the liberties of the
individual, or the domination of an alien people over one that
obstinately refused to be assimilated. Sometimes the spark that kindled
vital consciousness was the flash of a poet's genius, or the heroism of
some sturdy son of the soil. The causes of awakening have been
infinitely various, and have never wholly died away; but it is the
special glory of the Nineteenth Century that races which had hitherto