classic definition of a nation by the educator Jan Amos Komenský in his Gentis felicitas of 1659 can serve as evidence. The definition is remarkable in its conception of the components which constitute a national society and its theory of the bonds uniting the individual with the national totality. The succint Latin original of the definition is the following: “Gens seu natio est hominum eadem stirpe prognatorum, eodem mundi loco / velut communi domo, quam patriam vocant / habitantium, eodem linguae idiomate utentium et eodem iisdem communis amoris, concordiae et pro publico bono studii vinculis colligatorum multitudo.”–“A nation is a great number of people born of the same tribe, living in the same place in the world (as in a common house which they call their country), speaking the same special language, united by the same mutual bonds of natural love, concord, and efforts for the common good,”
Komenský clearly defines three objective elements of a nation: the unity or community of origin, territory, and language. However, they do not automatically form a nation as a higher, conscious social unit. A nation is the result of social relations and connections that originate in the political, economic, and cultural spheres. Komenský views a nation as a unit having a collective will and manifesting natural egotism in an effort to achieve the common good and prosperity, Komenský’s approach to the existence of a social order based on the feudal privileges of the Estates was basically positive, even though he criticized it and tried to improve it. Naturally, he did not arrive at the concept of a national state, Komenský demanded of the ruler and the aristocracy that they use the national language. He saw in government by foreigners and the deprivation of the Estates of their liberties the end of national dignity and slavery.
Komensky’s criticism of foreign supremacy and his condemnation of those Czechs who yielded meekly to the rule of foreigners and accommodated themselves to their arbitrariness reminds us of the work of a Jesuit, Bohuslav Balbín. This Czech historian analyzed the unfortunate economic, political, and cultural situation in Bohemia after the battle of White Mountain and the Thirty Years’ War in his booklet De regni Bohemiae felici quondam, nunc calamitoso statu (1672), which is usually known under the title of its later, enlightened editor, František Martin Pelel, as Dissertatio apologetica pro lingua slavonica, praecipue bohemica (1775). The author condemned the administration of Bohemia, reaching the conclusion that the universal catastrophe of this country had been the result of rule by foreigners. Balbín’s essay, a defense of the old Czech state and Czech language and a critical reaction to the reversal of fortunes in the country, to the rule of unenlightened absolutism, and to foreign
