Now, when I come to ask what is signified in their turn by these fundamental desires of political passions, I find they appear to me as the two essential composites of man’s will to situate himself _in real life_. To want real life is to want (_a_) To possess some material advantages, and (_b_) to be conscious of oneself as an individual. Every life which despises these two desires, every life which pursues only spiritual advantage or sincerely asserts itself in the universal, situates itself _outside the real_. Political passions, especially national passions insofar as they unite the two desires mentioned, seem to me essentially _realist_ passions. Here many persons will protest: ‘Yes,’ they will say, ‘the desires which make up political passions are realist desires, but the individual shifts these desires from himself to the group of which he is a part. The working man wants to obtain possession of material advantages for his class, not for his own limited person. The patriot wants to possess territories for his nation, not for his own narrow ego; he wants to be distinct from other men through his nation. Do you apply the term “realist” to passions which imply such a transfer from the individual to the collective body?’ Is it necessary to reply that when the individual transfers these desires to the body of which he is a part, he does not thereby alter their nature? And that all he does is simply to increase their dimensions immeasureably? To wish to possess material advantages _in one’s nation_, to want to feel distinct from other men _in one’s nation_, is still the desire to possess material advantages, still the desire to feel distinct from other men. It only means that, if you are a Frenchman, you want to possess Brittany, Provence, Guyenne, Algeria, Indo-China; and you want to feel yourself distinct from other men in Jeanne d’Arc, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Racine, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Pasteur. Add to this that at the same time you attach these desires, not to a transitory and precarious single existence, but to an ‘eternal’ existence, and feel them in that way. Not only does national egotism not cease to be egotism because it is national, but it becomes ‘sacred’ egotism.[24] Let me complete my definition by saying that political passions are realism of a particular quality, which is an important element of strength in them: They are _divinized_ realism.[25]