The image has always struck me as an apt metaphor for Canada: mindful neither of our past nor of our future, but lost in the plane of the present. It goes a long way, I think, to explain our inability to offer any serious resistance to secession. I do not think this is putting it too strongly: Somewhere along the way, much of this nation's political class simply lost its will to live.

It is by now well established that there could be no neat excision of Quebec, even if that were desirable. It is generally understood that separation would be a catastrophe all round: economically destructive, spiritually impoverishing, morally bankrupt. And, what grows more clear by the week, we have it in our power to prevent it.

Yet it remains equally widely held among those who wish to be regarded as sensible people that, should Quebeckers vote Yes, Canada would have no option but to begin the process of separation. Some might quibble over the question, others might haggle over the majority, but in principle, the idea that a referendum held solely among Quebeckers is enough to break up the country is all but unquestioned - not because we can't stop it, but because we shouldn't. We lack the legitimacy.

How did we reach such a state of self-abnegation? At the most contemptible level, it is explained by nothing more than a desire to avoid unpleasantness - to "remain friends," come what may. A policy that puts accommodation ahead of any other principle is the purest definition of appeasement.

Others seem bewitched by the frank ethnocentricity of Quebec nationalism, dressing this in wistful admiration for its sense of "community." So it is that a commonplace of political debate is that there really is no such thing as a Canadian nation, but rather at least three nations - francophone Quebeckers, natives, and the rest of us - on the unspoken thesis that, after all, real nations are ethnic nations.

Most often, we seem mesmerized by the separatists' constant invocation of "democratic principle." The extraordinary thing about this is that the separatists themselves show no compunction about ignoring the popular will: So long as the answer is No, they will not ask the question. They will only respect the people's vote on such a resolution, and at such a date, as will guarantee them a victory. This is not democracy; it is Bonapartism.

But acceptance of secession among the political class is rooted in a still more fundamental, usually unconscious assumption. That is, in their own minds, separation has already occurred. If the laws of Canada apply in Quebec only by leave of Quebeckers; if the territory of Quebec belongs not to Canada, but to Quebec; and if the only legitimate representatives of the people of Quebec are the members of the National Assembly, as is implicit in accepting a single vote, organized by the Parti Quebecois, as definitive, then Quebec is already a separate country in all but name. It remains only to ratify in law what is established in fact.

How willing you are to resist secession ultimately depends, however, on your sense of the country's history. If Canada exists only in the present, then separation is essentially a question of geography, and the immediate costs to ourselves, however unpalatable, are not so enormous. If, however, you locate your country in time as well as space, the stakes are much higher. It isn't only the consequences for future generations; it's more what it would mean to generations past.

If Canada is destroyed, then all of those who went before, everyone who ever struggled and sacrificed because they believed in this country and what it could be, all of them might never have lived. Separation would mark a break with the past: Five centuries from now, there would be no history of Canada to retell, no record of its citizens' achievements. Canada would exist only as a dimly remembered asterisk, like the Amphictyonic Council or the Achaean League.

It is still probable that Quebeckers will vote No. But it is worth discussing how we would respond in the event of a Yes. For it is really a debate about how we view the country, and what we think it means.