ABSTRACT
Ernest Renan (1823-92) was a rationalist scholar of the history of languages and religions, famed for his Life of Jesus (1863). Professor at the Sorbonne, his lecture on what is a nation was a vindication of the voluntaristic definition that originated with the French Revolution. He argued polemically against the insistence on blood and soil that was being affirmed ever more widely in Germany. Since the end of the Roman Empire, or rather, since the break-up of the empire of Charlemagne, western Europe gives the appearance of being divided into nations, some of which, in certain periods, have sought to exercise hegemony over the others, without ever meeting with lasting success. What Charles V of Spain, Louis XIV and Napoleon I were unable to do, probably no one will be able to do in the future. The establishment of a new Roman Empire, or a new empire of Charlemagne, has become an impossibility. Europe is too greatly divided for an attempt at universal domination not to provoke a coalition that would quickly bring the ambitious nation back within its natural borders. For a long time, a kind of equilibrium was established. For hundreds of years to come, France, England, Germany, and Russia will be still, despite the risks they will have taken, historical individuals, the essential pieces on a draughtsboard whose squares vary continually in size and importance, but never merge absolutely.
