Is it possible for a person to be entirely naturalized?--that is, to be
denationalized, to cast off the prejudice and traditions of one country
and take up those of another; to give up what may be called the
instinctive tendencies of one race and take up those of another. It is
easy enough to swear off allegiance to a sovereign or a government, and
to take on in intention new political obligations, but to separate one's
self from the sympathies into which he was born is quite another affair.
One is likely to remain in the inmost recesses of his heart an alien, and
as a final expression of his feeling to hoist the green flag, or the
dragon, or the cross of St. George. Probably no other sentiment is, so
strong in a man as that of attachment to his own soil and people, a
sub-sentiment always remaining, whatever new and unbreakable attachments
he may form. One can be very proud of his adopted country, and brag for
it, and fight for it; but lying deep in a man's nature is something, no
doubt, that no oath nor material interest can change, and that is never
naturalized. We see this experiment in America more than anywhere else,
because here meet more different races than anywhere else with the
serious intention of changing their nationality. And we have a notion
that there is something in our atmosphere, or opportunities, or our
government, that makes this change more natural and reasonable than it
has been anywhere else in history. It is always a surprise to us when a
born citizen of the United States changes his allegiance, but it seems a
thing of course that a person of any other country should, by an oath,
become a good American, and we expect that the act will work a sudden
change in him equal to that wrought in a man by what used to be called a
conviction of sin. We expect that he will not only come into our family,
but that he will at once assume all its traditions and dislikes, that
whatever may have been his institutions or his race quarrels, the moving
influence of his life hereafter will be the “Spirit of '76.”
What is this naturalization, however, but a sort of parable of human
life? Are we not always trying to adjust ourselves to new relations, to
get naturalized into a new family? Does one ever do it entirely? And how
much of the lonesomeness of life comes from the failure to do it! It is a
tremendous experiment, we all admit, to separate a person from his race,
from his country, from his climate, and the habits of his part of the
country, by marriage; it is only an experiment differing in degree to
introduce him by marriage into a new circle of kinsfolk. Is he ever
anything but a sort of tolerated, criticised, or admired alien? Does the
time ever come when the distinction ceases between his family and hers?
They say love is stronger than death. It may also be stronger than
family--while it lasts; but was there ever a woman yet whose most
ineradicable feeling was not the sentiment of family and blood, a sort of
base-line in life upon which trouble and disaster always throw her back?
Does she ever lose the instinct of it? We used to say in jest that a
patriotic man was always willing to sacrifice his wife's relations in
war; but his wife took a different view of it; and when it becomes a
question of office, is it not the wife's relations who get them? To be
sure, Ruth said, thy people shall be my people, and where thou goest I
will go, and all that, and this beautiful sentiment has touched all time,
and man has got the historic notion that he is the head of things. But is
it true that a woman is ever really naturalized? Is it in her nature to
be? Love will carry her a great way, and to far countries, and to many
endurances, and her capacity of self-sacrifice is greater than man's; but
would she ever be entirely happy torn from her kindred, transplanted from
the associations and interlacings of her family life? Does anything
really take the place of that entire ease and confidence that one has in
kin, or the inborn longing for their sympathy and society? There are two
theories about life, as about naturalization: one is that love is enough,
that intention is enough; the other is that the whole circle of human
relations and attachments is to be considered in a marriage, and that in
the long-run the question of family is a preponderating one. Does the
gate of divorce open more frequently from following the one theory than
the other? If we were to adopt the notion that marriage is really a
tremendous act of naturalization, of absolute surrender on one side or
the other of the deepest sentiments and hereditary tendencies, would
there be so many hasty marriages--slip-knots tied by one justice to be
undone by another? The Drawer did not intend to start such a deep
question as this. Hosts of people are yearly naturalized in this country,
not from any love of its institutions, but because they can more easily
get a living here, and they really surrender none of their hereditary
ideas, and it is only human nature that marriages should be made with
like purpose and like reservations. These reservations do not, however,
make the best citizens or the most happy marriages. Would it be any
better if country lines were obliterated, and the great brotherhood of
peoples were established, and there was no such thing as patriotism or
family, and marriage were as free to make and unmake as some people think
it should be? Very likely, if we could radically change human nature. But
human nature is the most obstinate thing that the International
Conventions have to deal with.