The retaining membrane that held Dutch culture together for more than a century was a marvel of elasticity. Responding to appropriate external stimuli, it could expand or contract as the conditions of its survival altered. Under pressure, it could tighten to compress the Dutch into a sense of their indissoluble unity. In more expansive times it could relax and swell, allowing for internal differentiation and the absorption of a whole gamut of beliefs, faiths and even tongues. An omniscient kind of social filter swallowed up those foreign bodies and spat them out again as burghers: civically salubrious and residentially reliable.
( Simon Schama )
[ The Embarrassment of Riches: ]
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