ain institution has only existed for a certain time. I am not
now denying that such a corporate nationality may happen to have a
psychology comparatively analogous to the psychology of youth. I am not
even denying that America has it. I am only pointing out, to begin with,
that we must free ourselves from the talismanic tyranny of a metaphor
which we do not recognise as a metaphor. Men realised that the old
mystical doctrines were mystical; they do not realise that the new
metaphors are metaphorical. They have some sort of hazy notion that
American society must be growing, must be promising, must have the
virtues of hope or the faults of ignorance, merely _because_ it has only
had a separate existence since the eighteenth century. And that is
exactly like saying that a new chapel must be growing taller, or that a
limited liability company will soon have its second teeth.

Now in truth this particular conception of American hopefulness would be
anything but hopeful for America. If the argument really were, as it is
still vaguely supposed to be, that America must have a long life before
it, because it only started in the eighteenth century, we should find a
very fatal answer by looking at the other political systems that did
start in the eighteenth century. The eighteenth century was called the
Age of Reason; and there is a very real sense in which the other systems
were indeed started in a spirit of reason. But starting from reason has
not saved them from ruin. If we survey the Europe of to-day with real
clarity and historic comprehension, we shall see that it is precisely
the most recent and the most rationalistic creations that have been
ruined. The two great States which did most definitely and emphatically
deserve to be called modern states were Prussia and Russia. There was no
real Prussia before Frederick the Great; no real Russian Empire before
Peter the Great. Both those innovators recognised themselves as
rationalists bringing a new reason and order into an indeterminate
barbarism; and doing for the barbarians what the barbarians could not do
for themselves. They did not, like the kings of England or France or
Spain or Scotland, inherit a sceptre that was the symbol of a historic
and patriotic people. In this sense there was no Russia but only an
Emperor of Russia. In this sense Prussia was a kingdom before it was a
nation; if it ever was a nation. But anyhow both men were particularly
modern in their whole mood