The idea of Europe, of a shared identity among European peoples which complements their various separate national identities and which might one day find political expression in common institutions, is not a new one.
Erasmus, Montesquieu, Victor Hugo and Friedrich Nietzsche are just some of the thinkers of previous centuries who, associating the nationstate with war-mongering and despotism, dreamed that all Europeans might come to recognise a common fatherland.
The Spanish political philosopher, Salvador de Madariaga, a contemporary of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, the founding fathers of the European Union, wrote of the continent of Rabelais and Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, Bach, Michelangelo and Dostoevsky.
A true Europe would not be born, he insisted, until the Spanish learned to say our Chartres, the English our Krakow, the Italians our Copenhagen and the Germans our Bruges. When, however, amid the ruins of postwar Europe, serious attention was first turned to the building of new structures uniting the exhausted nations, such flights of fancy as de Madariaga's were not felt to be what was immediately required.
"Europe will not be made in one go," Robert Schuman wrote in 1950. "It will be made by concrete achievements which create practical solidarity [between nations]."
Thus, accord being impossible to achieve on common defence structures, co-operation began with agreements on coal and steel, then atomic energy, then free movement of goods, capital and labour. The EEC (Common Market) became the European Community and later the European Union as it embraced first six, then nine, 10, 12 and 15 nations.
Most of the myriad stubborn difficulties met on the way - often presented by a hostile press as symptoms of terminal illness - have been overcome: who now speaks of wine lakes and butter mountains?
It will be difficult next year, as we begin to spend our euros and get ready to welcome the first of the new democracies of central Europe, to see the project which started with the Treaty of Rome as anything other than a resounding success.
And yet it is a success which seems to warm few hearts. In Ireland it has been observable through a number of referendums on Europe that the No side has seemed to have considerably more commitment and enthusiasm than the Yes.
The mainstream politicians, and the voters, of course know that Europe is good for them, but they seem unable to get too excited about it. The antis, on the other hand, have always had a fine line in passionate intensity.
Is there then something missing at the heart of Europe? Or does this thing we have painstakingly created over the last few decades indeed have a heart?
The Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulic tells the story of a Lithuanian intellectual who, when asked for a definition of this "Europe" he was so much in favour of, appeared stumped until he finally blurted out: "Europe is . . . not Russia!"
While such a definition is clearly invalid on the cultural level, politically it is quite understandable. Europe and its freedoms are indeed what the Lithuanians, Poles, Hungarians and Czechs looked at for 40 years and knew they were spiritually a part of and would indeed have been politically a part of had they not been firmly in the Russian grip.
So "not-Russia" is perhaps the start of a satisfactory definition of what Europe is or should be, though it must now be complemented by the equally important "not-America".
What that means is a political space which guarantees its citizens freedom from arbitrary persecution by the state or its servants and which fosters the legal and economic arrangements most favourable to wealth creation; but also one which promotes equality, welfare and social integration, which is concerned about issues of world trade and development, which will protect the environment and which celebrates linguistic and cultural diversity.
Finally, it is one which is aware that work and what the world calls success may be dominant values but are not necessarily the most important ones.
The sentiments of Salvador de Madariaga quoted above were spoken at the Hague Congress of 1948, which paved the way for the foundation in the following year of the Council of Europe, with its charter of human rights protection and cultural co-operation.
It is arguable that the essential dissociation at the heart of the European project, with the Community, and later Union, in charge of largely economic and financial matters and the Council of Europe entrusted with humanitarian and cultural issues - what the Americans call "the vision thing" - is potentially a serious flaw.
If so, it is perhaps one which we have been able to live with until now. Europe has been good to us so we are pro-European. When, however, in five, 10 or 15 years' time, our membership of the Union is seen more as a matter of giving than of taking, attitudes may significantly change.
It might then be as well before that happens to remember the ideas of Salvador de Madariaga and others and attempt to reintegrate the various economic, political, ethical and cultural elements which are in fact a unity and all of which were vital to the post-war European vision.