ABSTRACT
This chapter considers those passions termed political, owing to which men rise up against other men, the chief of which are racial passions, class passions and national passions. The condensation of political passions into a small number of very simple hatreds, springing from the deepest roots of the human heart, is a conquest of modern times. An apostle of the modern mind clamors for "politics first." The chapter shows what might be called the perfecting of political passions on the surface, in their more or less exterior aspects. The notion that political warfare involves a war of cultures is entirely an invention of times, and confers upon them a conspicuous place in the moral history of humanity. Political passions show a degree of universality, of coherence, of homogeneousness, of precision, of continuity, of preponderance, in relation to other passions.
