CHAPTER VIII
I
NATIONALITY AND DEMOCRACY; NATIONAL ORIGINS
Whatever the contemporary or the logical relation between nationality
and democracy as ideas and as political forces, they were in their
origin wholly independent one of the other. The Greek city states
supplied the first examples of democracy; but their democracy brought
with it no specifically national characteristics. In fact, the political
condition and ideal implied by the word nation did not exist in the
ancient world. The actual historical process, which culminated in the
formation of the modern national state, began some time in the Middle
Ages--a period in which democracy was almost an incredible form of
political association. Some of the mediaeval communes were not without
traces of democracy; but modern nations do not derive from those
turbulent little states. They derive from the larger political divisions
into which Europe drifted during the Dark Ages; and they have grown with
the gradually prospering attempt to bestow on the government of these
European countries the qualities of efficiency and responsibility.
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