If the nation consisted only in past and present, no one would be
concerned with defending it against an attack. Those who maintain the contrary
are either hypocrites or lunatics. But what happens is that the national past
projects its attractions- real or imaginary- into the future. A future in which
our nation continues to exist seems desirable. That is why we mobilise in its
defence, not on account of blood or language or common past. In defending the
nation we are defending our to-morrows, not our yesterdays. This is what re-echoes through the phrase of Renan; the nation
as a splendid programme for the morrow. The plebiscite decides on a future. The
fact that in this case the future consists in a continuance of the past does not
modify the question in the least; it simply indicates that Renan's definition
also is archaic in nature. Consequently, the national State must represent a
principle nearer to the pure idea of a State than the ancient polis or the
"tribe" of the Arabs, limited by blood. In actual fact, the national
idea preserves no little element of attachment to the past, to soil, to race;
but for that reason it is surprising to observe how there always triumphs in it
the spiritual principle of a unification of mankind, based on an alluring
programme of existence. More than that, I would say that that ballast of the
past, that relative limitation within material principles, have never been and
are not now completely spontaneous in the Western soul; they spring from the
erudite interpretation given by Romanticism to the idea of the nation. If that
XIXth-Century concept of nationality had existed in the Middle Ages, England,
France, Spain, Germany would never have been born.[11]
[11]The
principle of nationalities is, chronologically, one of the first symptoms of
Romanticism- at the end of the XVIIIth Century.
