Further growth, however, is extra-national in character; it may either take the parasitical form of one nation imposing its will and its "culture" upon other nations, or it may assume the proportions of that highest type of polity yet known to mankind, a commonwealth of nations freely associating together within the confines of a single sovereign State.[1] [Footnote 1: See Chapter IX.

for further treatment of this.] Sec.2._The Birth of Nationalism: Poland and the French Revolution_ .-- With these general principles in mind let us now consider the national idea at work in the nineteenth century.

Nations, in the sense just defined, have of course long existed in Europe.

England, Scotland, and Switzerland are nations whose life-histories date right back to the Middle Ages.

Joan of Are was a nationalist, and France has been a nation since the end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453.