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.