Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/360



§ 87. is a "nation"? The question has been discussed for a variety of purposes, political and philosophical, without apparently leading to any satisfactory definition, Mr. Freeman, for example, admitting the difficulty of definition, tells us that the word "suggests a considerable continuous part of the earth's surface inhabited by men who at once speak the same tongue and are united under the same government." This unity of territorial possession, language, and government, together with the vague requirement of a "considerable part of the earth's surface," affords an easy mark for captious criticism. At least Mr. Freeman's conception of nationality shows that historical accuracy compels us, while assuming some normal type of nationhood and treating it as if it were permanent, to admit that no definition of nationality can express more than a limited range of truth. Such a definition cannot cover the entire course of national life, for the beginnings of a nation are lost in countless little channels whose union has afterwards formed the full stream; and if we pursue this stream far enough we come out upon an ocean in which distinctions of clan, city commonwealth, nation, are alike lost in cosmopolitanism.