Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/390

 372 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

ality is from its nature limited in point of extent, and its develop- ment is, therefore, promoted by an isolated environment. The Denmark of the thirteenth century, the Swiss Federation of the fourteenth, and the Netherlands of the sixteenth were far ahead of their great neighbors in point of national self-consciousness. A small people preserves its peculiar character in isolation. The Jews were influenced, to be sure, by the people of Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia ; but they were few enough in number to retain their distinguishing stamp. Too small to be politically eradicated, they grew up from political weakness to intellectual and spiritual independence. The fate of the Saxons in Sieben- biirgen is in its fundamental features and conditions similar.

Even when a tribe has gained possession of a much broader region, still it always tends to restrain efforts directed at more extensive absorption of territory. The growth of the state always becomes in time a struggle with the tendency toward tribal segregation, and the conflicts between national and economic interests are the most unavoidable of all. In this century, not- able for the formation of great states, even in western and eastern Europe we have seen states splitting up for reasons of national- ity or national religion, but without doubt only temporarily. Higher civilization, to be sure, through the cultivation of the traditions and intellectual treasures stored up in language, causes a sharper separation of peoples, each of which tries to develop that which is most peculiar to itself; but at the same time, civili- zation creates for them a broader field through commerce and political expansion. Herein lies an antagonistic principle which is working disruptions in every civilized people of the present time, but which seems to be allayed everywhere by the superior influence of greater space, and to this result again trades more than anything else has contributed. The language of a people which enjoys political and economic supremacy forces itself not simply on subjected races. We see this process going on in all directions and on the largest scale in North America, where English has attained a universal sway in intellectual, economic, and political matters. This has been promoted, to be sure, by political conditions, but in general it has developed independently