which can only be touched upon here, is of great importance. It is again
referred to in Chap. VIII.; see pp. 374 ff.]

The truth is that there were three ideas in the air at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, all excellent in themselves, but quite impossible to be
realised at one and the same period. Two of these, the social or democratic
idea and the national idea, were made, as we have seen, living issues by
the French Revolution; the third, which may be called the international
idea, was raised by the Congress of Vienna. It was an old idea, of course,
for it had been embodied in that shadowy "Holy Roman Empire" which was the
medieval dream of Rome the Great; but its form was new, and now for the
first time it became a dream of the future rather than a dream of the past.
What men did not see then, and still for the most part fail to see, is that
the human race can only work out these three ideas properly in a certain
order. Democracy and nationhood may, as in the case of Italy, be acquired
by a people at the same moment; but without the realisation of the national
idea it is hardly possible to conceive of democratic government for any
country. The national idea, therefore, precedes the social idea, as Mazzini
rightly insists. Still more must it precede the international idea. By
this it is not meant that every nation in the world must have grown to
self-consciousness and have possessed itself of freedom before we come
within sight of a world-concert and world-peace. But certainly in Europe
itself the national question had to be settled before there could be any
chance of establishing an international tribunal. It is equally certain
that the social idea also claims preference of the international idea. The
great danger of setting up "an effective machine for regulating the affairs
of Europe" is that the machine may get into the wrong hands. The Holy
Alliance is a warning, which should not be forgotten. It became an
obstruction to progress, a strait-waistcoat which threatened to strangle
the liberties of Europe, because it got into the hands of a "vested