The coherence just described might be called a surface coherence, but there is added to it a coherence of essence. For the very reason that the holders of the same political passion form a more compact, impassioned group, they also form a more _homogeneous_, impassioned group, in which individual ways of feeling disappear and the zeal of each member more and more takes on the colour of the others. In France, for instance, one cannot but be struck by the fact that the enemies of the democratic system (I am speaking of the mass, not the highest points) display a passion which has little variety, shows very slight differences in different persons. How little this mass of hatred is weakened by personal and original manners of hating--one might almost say that this passion itself is obedient to ‘democratic levelling down’! How much more uniformity is shown now than a hundred years ago by the emotions known as anti-Semitism, anti-Clericalism and Socialism, in spite of the immense number of varieties in the last-named! And do not those who are subject to these emotions now all tend _to say the same thing_? Political passions, as passions, seem to have attained the habit of discipline; they seem to obey a word of command even in the manner they are felt. It is easy to see what increase of strength they acquire thereby. With some of these passions the increase in homogeneousness is accompanied by an increased _precision_. For instance, we all know that a hundred years ago Socialism was a strong but vague passion with the great mass of its supporters. But to-day Socialism has more closely defined the object it wishes to attain, has determined the exact point where it means to strike its adversary and the movement it intends to create in order to succeed. The same progress may be observed in the anti-democratic movement. And we all know that hatred becomes stronger by becoming more precise. There is another sort of perfecting of political passions. Throughout history until our own days I see these passions acting intermittently, blazing up and then subsiding. I see that the undoubtedly terrible and numerous explosions of class and race hatred were followed by long periods of calm, or at least of somnolence. Wars between nations lasted for years, but not hatred--even if we may say that it existed. To-day we have only to look every morning at any daily paper and we shall see that political hatreds do not cease for a single day. At best some of them are silent a moment for the benefit of one among them which suddenly claims all the subject’s strength. This is the period of ‘national unions’, which do not in the very least herald in the reign of love, but merely of a general hatred which for the moment dominates partial hatreds. To-day political passions have acquired _continuity_, which is so rare a quality in all feelings.