Page:The empire and the century.djvu/42

 downfall of the mediæval Empire may be regarded as destructive, it would be shallow paradox to pretend that they have not, in a far deeper and more vital sense, been constructive. The reality of the Middle Ages fell far short of its idealism; and, though a system of competing nationalities may be inferior in theory to a universal State, it is a great advance in practice on feudal anarchy. While the old order was being overthrown, or its remains being cleared away, the foundations of a new and fairer and more enduring order were being silently prepared. Only in the fulness of time will the new edifice be revealed in its true lines and proportions, but it is beginning now to be possible to discern, as through a mist, the outlines of its structure.

But that we may be better able to comprehend the point at which we stand in the world's history, and to escry the ideals which are to be our guides for the future, let us look more closely at the political changes and activities that have occupied the four or five centuries since the Middle Ages came to an end. They can be summed up, I think, under two great movements: one intensive in its energy and significance, the other extensive; one affecting the internal organization of the State, or of the European system of States, the other concerned rather with the position and influence of Europe in the world at large, both running throughout the period, and between them exhausting nearly all the political significance of this modern time.

IV. The former movement is in one of its aspects—what we may call, perhaps, the negative or destructive aspect—the great movement of liberation which, beginning as early as the fourteenth century, reached a culminating point in its progress in the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, and yet another in the political revolution of the eighteenth. In its positive or constructive aspect it is the national movement which reached its full