ABSTRACT
Al l these factors helped the social life of the West to retain something of a universal character even after the Holy Roman Empire had become the merest shadow of a shadow and the extremely real bond of the Church had been burst asunder by the Reformation. Thus began a line of development which can be followed more or less clearly from medieval times, through the period of independent and sovereign states right up to the liberalism and cosmopolitanism of the 18th century and the attempts at the revival of that "European unity which had never wholly been eradicated", to quote Harald Hjarne, beginning in the Holy Alliance and eventually finding expression in the League of Nations.1
