Excerpt from Indian NationalityThe third dominating conception of the West is the conception of the Nation as the surest foundation for the organisation of the State, and the Nation we think of as a body of people bound together by such a multitude of common interests and common thoughts that they easily and naturally understand one another, that they are conscious of belonging together, ' that they readily accept and submit to a common body of laws and a social order, and that they will be ready, as if by instinct, to subordinate all merely sectional interests or ambitions to the common welfare in case of need. The patriotism of the Nation is for us the cement that holds the State together without the application or threat of brute force, which is always necessary in non national States. The conception of the Nation is the latest-born and also the least obvious and natural of the distinctive conceptions of western civilisation. It is quite modern in its development, the theory of it only began to be expounded in the nineteenth century. It is a mode of political organisation which has been unknown over the greater part of the earth's surface and during the greater part of human history, for it could not arise except in those societies in which the unifying conditions necessary for its existence had already grown up - a common or dominating language with the body of ideas which it conveys a sense of racial unity, or at least the absence of any fixed and formal barriers between one section of the community and another, a common body of fundamental ethical ideas, above all a common body of traditions, formed by a long habit of co-operation in success or in disaster. And these factors of nationhood do not naturally or inevitably grow up together.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.