system in general.1 According According to the Stoics, human society has for its basis the identity of reason in individuals; hence we have no ground for limiting this society to a single nation. We are all, says Seneca, members of one great body, the universe; "we are all akin by Nature, who has formed us of the same elements, and placed us here together for the same end." "If our reason is common," says Marcus Aurelius, "there is a common law, as reason commands us what to do and what not to do; and if there is a common law we are fellowcitizens; if this is so, we are members of some political community-the world is in a manner a state.' To this great state, which includes all rational beings, the individual states are related as the houses of a city are to the city collectively; and the wise man will esteem it far above any particular community in which the accident of birth has placed him."

But the Roman ideal of patriotism, with its utter disregard for foreign nations," was not opposed by philosophy alone it met with an even more formidable antagonist in the new religion. The Christian and the Stoic rejected it on different grounds: whilst the Stoic felt himself as a citizen of the world, the Christian felt himself as a citizen of heaven, to whom this planet was only a place of exile. Christianity was not hostile to the State. At the very time when Nero committed his worst atrocities, St. Paul declared that there is no power but of God, and that whosoever resists the power resists the ordinance of God and shall be condemned; and Tertullian says that all Christians send up their prayers for the life of the emperors, for their ministers, for magistrates, for the good of the

1 See Zeller, Stoics, &c. p. 327 sq. 2 Seneca, Epistula, xcv. 52.

3 Marcus Aurelius, Commentarii, iv. 4. Cf. ibid. vi. 44, and ix. 9; Cicero, De legibus, i. 7 (23); Epictetus, Dissertationes, i. 13. 3.

4 Marcus Aurelius, iii. II.

5 Seneca, De otio, iv. I. Idem, Epistule, lxviii. 2. Epictetus, Dis

sertationes, iii. 22. 83 sqq.

6 Cf. Lactantius, Divina Institu tiones, vi. (De vero cultu '), 6 (Migne, Patrologia cursus, vi. 655).

7 St. Matthew, xxii. 21. I Peter, ii. 13 sq.

iii. 1.

Romans, xiii. 1 sq. See also Titus,

State and the peace of the Empire. But the emperor should be obeyed only so long as his commands do not conflict with the law of God-a Christian ought rather to suffer like Daniel in the lions' den than sin against his religion; and nothing is more entirely foreign to him than affairs of State. Indeed, in the whole Roman Empire there were no men who so entirely lacked patriotism as the early Christians. They had no affection for Judea, they soon forgot Galilee, they cared nothing for the glory of Greece and Rome. When the judges asked them which was their country they said in answer, "I am a Christian." long after Christianity had become the religion of the Empire, St. Augustine declared that it matters not, in respect of this short and transitory life, under whose dominion a mortal man lives, if only he be not compelled to acts of impiety or injustice.' or injustice. Later on, when the Church grew into a political power independent of the State, she became a positive enemy of national interests. In the seventeenth century a Jesuit general called patriotism plague and the most certain death of Christian love."7

And

a

With the fall of the Roman Empire patriotism died out in Europe, and remained extinct for centuries. It was a feeling hardly compatible either with the migratory life of the Teutonic tribes or with the feudal system, which grew up wherever they fixed their residence. The knights, it is true, were not destitute of the natural affection for home. When Aliaumes is mortally wounded by Géri li Sors he exclaims, Holy Virgin, I shall never more see SaintQuentin nor Néèle and the troubadour Bernard de Ventadour touchingly sings, "Quan la doussa aura venta― Deves nostre païs,-M'es veiaire que senta-Odor de

8

"his

Paradis." 1 But to a man of the Middle Ages country" meant little more than the neighbourhood in which he lived.2 Kingdoms existed, but no nations. The first duty of a vassal was to be loyal to his lord; but no national spirit bound together the various barons of one country. A man might be the vassal of the king of France and of the king of England at the same time; and often, from caprice, passion, or sordid interest, the barons sold their services to the enemies of the kingdom. The character of his knighthood was also perpetually pressing the knight to a course of conduct distinct from all national objects. The cause of a distressed lady was in many instances preferable to that of the country to which he belonged-as when the Captal de Bouche, though an English subject, did not hesitate to unite his troups with those of the Compte de Foix to relieve the ladies in a French town, where they were besieged and threatened with violence by the insurgent peasantry. When a knight's duties towards his country are mentioned in the rules of Chivalry they are spoken of as duties towards his lord:"The wicked knight," it is said, "that aids not his earthly lord and natural country against another prince, is a knight without office." Far from being, as M. Gautier asserts," the object of an express command in the code of Chivalry, true patriotism had there no place at all. It was not known as an ideal, still less did it exist as a reality, among either knights or commoners. As a duke of Orleans could bind himself by a fraternity of arms and alliance to a duke of Lancaster, so English merchants were in the habit of supplying nations at war against England with provisions bought at English fairs, and weapons wrought by English hands. If, as M. Gaston Paris maintains, a

6

8

1 Quoted by Gautier, La Chevalerie, p. 64.

2 See Cibrario, Della economia politica del medio eve, i. 263; de Crozals, Histoire de la civilization, ii. 287.

3 Ordre of Chyualry, foll. 13 b,

32 b.

4 See Mills, History of Chivalry, i.

140 sq.

Scott, Essay on Chivalry, p. 31.
Ordre of Chyualry, fol. 14 b.

7 Gautier, op. cit. p. 33.

Sainte-Palaye, Mémoires sur l'ancienne Chevalerie, ii. 72.

9 Pike, History of Crime in England, i. 264 sq.

deep feeling of national union had inspired the Chanson de Roland,' it is a strange, yet undeniable, fact that no distinct trace of this feeling displayed itself in the mediæval history of France before the English wars.

Besides feudalism and the want of political cohesion, there were other factors that contributed to hinder the development of national personality and patriotic devotion. This sentiment presupposes not only that the various parts of which a country is composed shall have a vivid feeling of their unity, but also that they, united, shall feel themselves as a nation clearly distinct from other nations. In the Middle Ages national differences were largely obscured by the preponderance of the Universal Church, by the creation of the Holy Roman Empire, by the prevalence of a common language as the sole vehicle of mental culture, and by the undeveloped state of the vernacular tongues. To make use of the native dialect was a sign of ignorance, and to place worldly interests above the claims of the Church was impious. When Macchiavelli declared that he preferred his country to the safety of his soul, people considered him guilty of blasphemy; and when the Venetians defied the Papal thunders by averring that they were Venetians in the first place, and only Christians in the second, the world heard them with amazement.2

In England the national feeling developed earlier than on the Continent, no doubt owing to her insular position and freer institutions; as Montesquieu observes, patriotism. thrives best in democracies. At the time of the English Reformation the sense of corporate national life had evidently gained considerable strength, and the love of England has never been expressed in more exquisite form than it was by Shakespeare. At the same time the sense of patriotism was often grossly perverted by religious

1 Paris, La poésie du moyen age, p. 107. M. Gautier says (op. cit. p. 61) that Roland is "la France faite homme."

2National Personality,' in Edinburgh Review, cxciv. 133.

3 Montesquieu, De l'esprit des Lois, iv. 5 (Euvres, p. 206 sq.).

bigotry and party spirit.' Even champions of liberty, like Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, accepted French gold in the hope of embarrassing the King; and Sidney went so far as to try to instigate De Witt to invade England. Loyalism, in particular, proved a much stronger incentive than love of country. A loyalist like Strafford would have employed half-savage Irish troops against his own countrymen, and the Scotch Jacobites invited a French invasion.

3

In France the development of the national feeling was closely connected with the strengthening of the royal power and its gradual victory over feudalism. The word patrie was for the first time used by Charles VII.'s chronicler, Jean Chartier, and he also condemned as renégats those Frenchmen who, at the end of the hundred years' war, fought on the side of the English. But patriotism was for a long time inseparably confounded with loyalty to the sovereign. According to Bossuet "tout l'État est en la personne du prince "; and Abbé Coyer observes that Colbert believed royaume and patrie to signify one and the same thing. In the eighteenth century the spirit of rebellion succeeded that of devotion to the king; but the key-note of the great movement which led to the Revolution was the liberty and equality of the individual, not the glory or welfare of the nation. Men were looked upon as members of the human race, rather than as citizens of any particular country. To be a citizen of every nation, and not to belong to one's native country alone, was the dream of French writers in the eighteenth century. "The true sage is a cosmopolitan," says a writer of comedy. Diderot asks which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains for ever, or to save one's fatherland, which is

1 See Edinburgh Review, cxciv. 133, 136 sq.; Pearson, National Life and Character, p. 190.

2 Guibal, Histoire du sentiment national en France pendant la guerre de Cent ans, p. 526 sq.

3

Legrand, L'idée de patrie, p. 20.

4 Block, Dictionnaire général de la politique, ii. 518.

Texte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature, p. 79.

6 Palissot de Montenoy, Les philosophes, iii. 4, p. 75.