Abstract
SUCH words as Empire and Imperial, like many others, suffer some disadvantage from their historical antecedents. Looked at in the past they recall something Roman, something Napoleonic; the rule of dependent peoples, conquered by the sword, and governed, not wholly inefficiently, but without much say in the matter, by military power. Looked at in the present and with a scientific eye, the British Empire reveals itself as something fundamentally different. It is simply the last term of social aggregation. Free peoples, starting from the family, aggregate themselves into larger and larger groups, and the common freedom is maintained by the naval supremacy of the mother-country. The Crown consecrates the unity of the whole.
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Science and the Imperial Conference . Nature 86, 382–383 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/086382a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/086382a0