ry point of view, but in one strictly
practical, the world is not the same world as it was when men had not
yet dreamed of the kindred between Sanscrit, Greek, and English, when
it was looked on as something of a paradox to him that there was a
distinction between Celtic and Teutonic tongues and nations.
Ethnological and philological researches--I do not forget the
distinction between the two, but for the present I must group them
together--have opened the way for new national sympathies, new national
antipathies, such as would have been unintelligible a hundred years
ago. A hundred years ago a man's political likes and dislikes seldom
went beyond the range which was suggested by the place of his birth or
immediate descent. Such birth or descent made him a member of this or
that political community, a subject of this or that prince, a
citizen--perhaps a subject--of this or that commonwealth. The
political community of which he was a member had its traditional
alliances and traditional enmities, and by those alliances and enmities
the likes and dislikes of the members of that community were guided.
But those traditional alliances and enmities were seldom determined by
theories about language or race. The people of this or that place
might be discontented under a foreign government; but, as a rule, they
were discontented only if subjection to that foreign government brought
with it personal oppression or at least political degradation. Regard
or disregard of some purely local privilege or local feeling went for
more than the fact of a government being native or foreign. What we
now call the sentiment of nationality did not go for much; what we call
the sentiment of race went for nothing at all. Only a few men here and
there would have understood the feelings which have led to those two
great events of our own time, the political reunion of the German and
Italian nations after their long political dissolution. Not a soul
would have understood the feelings which have allowed Panslavism to be
a great practical agent in the affairs of Europe, and which have made
talk about "the Latin race," if not practical, at least possible.
Least of all, would it have been possible to give any touch of
political importance to what would have then seemed so wild a dream as
a primeval kindred between Magyar and Ottoman.

That feelings such as these, and the practical consequences which have
flowed from them, are distinctly due to sci