Race, Nation, Religion the Jews #247922

What is a nation, and what is a race? At first that would not, I dare say, seem to you a difficult question to answer, but the question is really less easy than it looks. I have the Century Dictionary by my side as I write; let us see what answer it gives. In a broad sense,' it says, a nation is a race of people: an aggregation of persons of the same ethnic family, and speaking the same language or cognate languages. But this is surely a strange use of the word; we surely mean by nation something less loose and vague, and something less synonymous with race. But the die tionary proceeds thus In a narrower sense, a nation is a political society composed of a sovereign or government and subjects or citizens, and constituting a political unit; an organized community, inhabitinga certain extent of territory, within which its sovereignty is exercised. This narrower sense is certainly much nearer to what in ordinary speech we mean by the word.