ons, is forced to establish between
itself and the others the strictest economic relations and to bind
into the system of common interests also barbarous countries and those
of differing civilisation. But how? By scrupulously respecting all the
intellectual and moral diversities of men. What matters it if a people
be Roman Catholic or Protestant, Mohammedan or Buddhist, monarchic or
republican, provided it buys, sells, takes part in the economic unity
of the modern world? This is the policy of contemporary states and was
the policy of the Roman Empire. It has often been observed that in the
modern world, so well administered, there is an intellectual and moral
diversity greater than that during the fearful anarchy of the Middle
Ages, when all the lettered classes had a single language, the Latin,
and the lower classes held, on certain fundamental questions, the same
ideas--those taught by the Church. A correct observation, this, but
one from which there is no need to draw too many conclusions; since in
our history the material unity and the ideal are naturally exclusive.

We are returning, in a vaster world, to the condition of the Roman
Empire at its beginning; to an immense economic unity, which,
notwithstanding the aberrations of protectionism, is grander and
firmer than all its predecessors; to a political unity not so great,
yet considerable, because even if peace be not eternal, it is at least
the normal condition of the European states; to an indifference for
every effort put forth to establish moral and ideal uniformity
among the nations, great and small, that share in this political and
economic unity. This is why we understand Augustus and his times much
more readily than we do the times of Charlemagne, even though from the
latter we possess a greater number of documents; this is why we can
write a history of Augustus and rectify so many mistakes made about
him by preceding generations. It has often happened to me to find, _a
propos_ of the volumes written on Augustus, that my contradiction of
tradition creates a kind of instinctive diffidence. Many say: "Yes,
this book is interesting; but is it possible that for twenty centuries
everybody has been mistaken?--that it was necessary to wait till 1908
to understand what occurred in the year 8?" But those twenty centuries
reduce themselves, as far as regards the possibility of understanding
Augustus, to little more than a hundred years. Since Augustus was the
last