LAWS OF NATURE IN CIVILIZATIONS 239

the first of the regular cycles of war-and-peace in this series (currebat
A.D. 1568-1672), the number rose again from three to five through the
successful self-assertion of a United Northern Netherlands that had
broken out of the Spanish Monarchy and a Sweden that had broken out
of the Danish Monarchy.

During the second of these three regular cycles (currebat A.D. 1672-
1792) the number threatened to fall as sharply as it had risen during the
preceding cycle; for Spain, as well as the Netherlands and Sweden, now
proved unequal to staying the course, while the sixteenth-century fission
of the Hapsburg Power into a Spanish and an Austrian branch came
into danger of being neutralized by an eighteenth-century union of the
Spanish Monarchy with France to create a Bourbon Power which, in the
hands of Louis XIV, would have outclassed all the other Powers of the
Western World as decidedly as the undivided Hapsburg Power had out-
classed its French rival before the abdication of Charles V. None of these
possibilities, however, materialized; for the replacement of a Hapsburg
by a Bourbon dynasty at Madrid did not, after aU, 'abolish the Pyrenees* ;x
a Bourbon Spain remained at least as separate from a Bourbon France
after A.D. 1713 as a Hapsburg Spain had been, since A.D. 1556, from a
Hapsburg Austria; and the casualties among the parvenues 'just-great*
Powers were made good by replacements. A United Kingdom of England
and Scotland took the place of a United Netherlands who had exhausted
herself in winning a General War of A,D. 1672-1713 in which she had
been the protagonist in the anti-French coalition; Prussia took the place
of a Sweden who had exhausted herself in waging the Northern War of
A.D. 1700-21; and, though an eighteenth-century Spain who succeeded
in retaining her independence did not succeed in becoming a Great
Power again, this gap in the ranks of the Great Powers of the Western
World was filled by the enlistment of an Orthodox Christian Russia
whose decisive victory over Sweden had demonstrated the effectiveness
of her reception of the Western Civilization, at any rate on the military
plane.

During the third cycle (currebat A.D. 1792-1914) a number which had
thus remained constant during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
at the figure of five was raised once more, and this time from five to
eight, by the successive additions of a United Italy, a United States oi
North America, and a Westernizing Japan. A nineteenth-century Italy
attained the stature of a 'just-great' Power that had been attained by a
seventeenth-century Holland and Sweden. A twentieth-century Japan
won her spurs by defeating Russia, as an eighteenth-century Russia
had won hers by defeating Sweden. The United States emerged through
a fission of an eighteenth-century British Empire which ultimately had
the same effect of making two Great Powers out of one as the fission of
the Hapsburg Power after the abdication of Charles V, though the
secession of the United States from the British Empire was achieved by
the force of arms with which Sweden and the United Netherlands had

1 'II n'y a plus de Pyr&i^es1 was Louis XIV's comment on the accession of his grand-
son to the throne of Spain in A.D. 1700 according to Voltaire, Le Sticle de Louis Quatorzet
chap. 28.