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THE SPIRIT OF RUSSIA
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as a multilingual state. It is obvious that the relationship between state and nationality and the bearing of extant political methods upon the principle of nationality require closer examination. Special problems are constituted by the nationality of the dynasties and of the aristocracies. In Poland and in Russia, for instance, we find social and economic differences between peoples of one and the same state.

Knowledge of nationality becomes more and more definitely organised in specific disciplines, and above all in anthropology and ethnography. The domain of what is termed folk-psychology is somewhat vague but this department belongs to the sphere of sociological research. History and linguistic science have, of course, important bearings upon the philosophy of race and nationality.

After Herder's preliminary essays in this field, the further development of the philosophy of nationality was first undertaken by Fichte. It was quite in accordance with the spirit of his age that he should incline to ignore the political state whilst attaching much importance to the nation, and that he should advocate a national system of education for the Germans. Contemporary with Fichte and subsequent to him came the romanticist philosophers of nationality, and above all certain representatives of the historical school of law; but in this connection we must think also of Hegel, of Schopenhauer and his pupil Hartmann, of Lagarde, Richard Wagner, and Gobineau, and in quite recent times of Houston Chamberlain, and others.

When the philosophy of nationality has been more precisely formulated it will doubtless become possible to speak of a science of nationality analogous to the science of religion or to the science of language.

When we thus endeavour to attain to clear ideas concerning the functions of a scientific philosophy of nationality, it becomes plain that the slavophils were unequal to the task. By this I do not mean to imply that the German philosophers, the teachers of the slavophils, did not effect a good deal in the new field of research. But the earlier German writers were comparatively sterile, and especially striking to the critical observer is the naïve way in which Hegel makes use of the "national spirit" as a historical and social category without troubling to subject the concept to precise analysis. In general terms we may say that it is the great fault of Hegel that he fails to subject to critical analysis the most important of his historical and