ABSTRACT
This chapter describes that political passions can be reduced to two fundamental desires. They include the will of a group of men to get hold of some material advantage, such as territories, comfort, political power; and the will of a group of men to become conscious of themselves as individuals, insofar as they are distinct in relation to other men. It appears that racial passion, insofar as it is not one with national passion, is chiefly based on the will of a group of men to set themselves up as distinct from others; the same thing may be said of religious passion, if we consider it in its pure state. A passion whose sole motive is interest is too weak to contend with another which combines interest and pride. Humanity, by its present practice of political passions, thereby declares that it has become more realist, more exclusively and more religiously realist than it has ever been.
