efficiency of these processes as nationalism itself.
It is only when we realise the true nature of this spread and fertilisation of ideas, arts, and institutions, the riper fruits of the spirit of a nation, that we realise the legitimate as distinguished from the illegitimate expansion, the valid significance of empire. When nations compete to take one another’s lives or land or trade, the dominion which the conqueror establishes has no element of permanence; another turn of the military or commercial tide wipes out the victory and leaves scarce a ripple in the sands. But the influence exerted through acts of peace is more lasting, more penetrating, and more glorious. Shakspere, Byron, Darwin, and Stevenson have done incomparably more for the influence of England in the history of the world than all the statesmen and soldiers who have won victories or annexed new provinces. Macaulay has well said it, “There is an empire exempt from all natural sources of decay – that empire is the imperishable empire of our art and our morals, our literature and our law.” This antagonism between the extensive empire and the intensive empire is not rhetorical, it is grounded upon biological necessities.