 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
In Hegel there is a World Spirit or a World Conductor who presides over the development of civilization, and uses different nations successively as its instruments. At one time it divided its attentions between Mesopotamia and the banks of the Nile; then it migrated to Greece, to Rome, and, for the past 1,400 years, to Germany. At some unspecified but distant date it will cross the Atlantic and settle in the United States. At each stage the nation which is, for the time, the vehicle of the World Spirit is justified in being imperialistic, and will succeed in its enterprises until its era comes to an end. nations that resist it, as Carthage resisted Rome, are blind to their subordinate place in the cosmic scheme, and are doomed to inevitable defeat.
Source: Bertrand Russell: Human Society in Ethics and Politics, (1954), chapter 5
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