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Chapter XIIThe Ancient Cycle of PrenationalEmpire-Building — The ModernCycle of Nation-BuildingWE HAVE seen that the building of the true nationalunit was a problem of human aggregation left over bythe ancient world to the mediaeval. The ancient worldstarted from the tribe, the city state, the clan, the small regionalstate — all of them minor units living in the midst of other likeunits which were similar to them in general type, kin usually inlanguage and most often or very largely in race, marked off atleast from other divisions of humanity by a tendency towardsa common civilisation and protected in that community witheach other and in their diversity from others by favourable geographicalcircumstances. Thus Greece, Italy, Gaul, Egypt, China,Medo-Persia, India, Arabia, Israel, all began with a loose culturaland geographical aggregation which made them separateand distinct culture-units before they could become nation-units.Within that loose unity the tribe, clan or city or regional statesformed in the vague mass so many points of distinct, vigorousand compact unity which felt indeed more and more powerfullythe divergence and opposition of their larger cultural oneness tothe outside world but could feel also and often much more nearlyand acutely their own divergences, contrasts and oppositions.Where this sense of local distinctness was most acute, there theproblem of national unification was necessarily more difficultand its solution, when made, tended to be more illusory.The solution was in most cases attempted. In Egypt andJudaea it was successfully found even in that ancient cycle ofhistorical evolution; but in the latter instance certainly, in theformer probably, the full result came only by the hard disciplineof subjection to a foreign yoke. Where this discipline was