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 300 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

cially at all critical points, by its own possessions. Even today only the British Empire can be designated as such. World-wide scattered interests constitute no position as a world-power ; these can be maintained through commerce by small states like Bel- gium and Switzerland. Even a land-mass such as that of Russia would only grow to a world-empire through broader expansion on the Pacific and a corresponding position on the Atlantic ; since only the oceans open to her an avenue for the possible extension of her sway over the lands of the western and south- ern hemispheres. When mention is made in historical works of the world-power of Rome, of the world-empire of Darius, of the world-position of the German Empire in the Middle Ages, and of many other world-ruling phenomena, a justification for such expressions can be sought only in the limited horizon of the times to which they refer. In our age they are merely hyper- bolical and must rapidly become antiquated in the face of the great size of real world-powers.

In the idea world-power, there lurks an exaggeration which can be readily discerned. In view of the existing divisions of races and the form of our present political institutions and con- ditions, the expansion of a single government over the whole habitable earth is unthinkable. A universal state with 1500 million "citizens of the world" belongs to the realm of poetry. And nevertheless, the effort to banish the idea of cosmopolitism out of practical politics as a useless chimera has failed utterly. Even a hundred years ago, the intellectual community of the civilized and literary peoples of Europe evidenced the fact that the boundaries of its own land had grown too narrow for every separate nation, and those of the continent, too contracted for all. The literature of world-wide circulation and the intellectual cosmopolitism, which then grew to be a reality, could not possibly remain without exerting a retro-active influence politically. The idea of natural rights, the movement against the slave-trade and even against slavery, then so deeply rooted in most non-Euro- pean lands, the considerate policy towards the natives on the part of the great colonial power England, all had their origin