Finally, we may further reckon _allies_ as the last support of the defensive. Naturally we do not mean ordinary allies, which the assailant may likewise have; we speak of those _essentially interested in maintaining_ the integrity of the country. If for instance we look at the various states composing Europe at the present time, we find (without speaking of a systematically regulated balance of power and interests, as that does not exist, and therefore is often with justice disputed, still, unquestionably) that the great and small states and interests of nations are interwoven with each other in a most diversified and changeable manner, each of these points of intersection forms a binding knot, for in it the direction of the one gives equilibrium to the direction of the other; by all these knots therefore, evidently a more or less compact connection of the whole will be formed, and this general connection must be partially overturned by every change. In this manner the whole relations of all states to each other serve rather to preserve the stability of the whole than to produce changes, that is to say, _this tendency_ to stability exists in general. This we conceive to be the true notion of a balance of power, and in this sense it will always of itself come into existence, wherever there are extensive connections between civilised states. How far this tendency of the general interests to the maintenance of the existing state of things is efficient is another question; at all events we can conceive some changes in the relations of single states to each other, which promote this efficiency of the whole, and others which obstruct it. In the first case they are efforts to perfect the political balance, and as these have the same tendency as the universal interests, they will also be supported by the majority of these interests. But in the other case, they are of an abnormal nature, undue activity on the part of some single states, real maladies; still that these should make their appearance in a whole with so little cohesion as an assemblage of great and little states is not to be wondered at, for we see the same in that marvellously organised whole, the natural world. If in answer we are reminded of instances in history where single states have effected important changes, solely for their own benefit, without any effort on the part of the whole to prevent the same, or cases where a single state has been able to raise itself so much above others as to become almost the arbiter of the whole,—then our answer is that these examples by no means prove that a tendency of the interests of the whole in favour of stability does not exist, they only show that its action was not powerful enough at the moment. The effort towards an object is a different thing from the motion towards it. At the same time it is anything but a nullity, of which we have the best exemplification in the dynamics of the heavens.