List distinguishes several “degrees of culture,” or what we would to-day call “economic stages,” and he even claims actual historical sequence for his classification into the savage, the pastoral, the agricultural, the agricultural-manufacturing, and the agricultural-manufacturing-commercial stage.[575] A nation becomes “normal”[576] only when it has attained the last stage. List understands by this that such is the ideal that a nation ought to follow. As a matter of fact he would allow it to possess a navy and to found colonies only on condition that it kept up its foreign trade and extended its sphere of influence. It is only at this stage that a nation can nourish a vast population, ensure a complete development of the arts and sciences, and retain its independence and power. The last two ideas constitute the _sine qua non_ of nationality.[577] Not all nations, it is true, can pretend to this complete development. It requires a vast territory, with abundant natural resources, and a temperate climate, which itself aids the development of manufactures.[578] But where these conditions are given then it becomes a nation’s first duty to exert all its forces in order to attain this stage. Germany possessed these desiderata to a remarkable degree. All that was needed was an extension of territory, and List lays claim to Holland and Denmark as a portion of Germany, declaring that their incorporation would be regarded even by themselves as being both desirable and necessary. Accordingly, he wished them to enter the Confederacy of their own free will.[579] Hence the aim of a commercial policy is no longer what it was for Smith, viz. the enriching of a nation. It is a much more complex ideal that List proposes, both historically and politically, but an ideal which implies as a primary necessity the establishment of manufactures.