THE NATION AS AN INDIVIDUAL
Patriotism is the will to national individuality. What justification
for its existence is there in the groundwork of fact? Is there really
any individuality for the will to rest itself upon? Is the country an
individual?
There are those who deny that patriotism really has anything objective
to feed upon. It is hard, they say, to find anything that the flag
stands for or to which one addresses his choral chant when he sings,
“My Country! ’tis of thee.” They ask what one’s country can mean to
him. When one speaks of country, is he not thinking of that spot of
earth which he calls home, those activities and institutions which
he has seen working in his own community, or perhaps only the map? A
country as big as the United States, for example, can hardly be said
to be appreciated by the mind of a single man. Most of the country
no one has ever even seen. The “collective mind” is shown to be a
fiction. A people does not form a “person,” but remains only a group
of individuals. And the corollary seems to be that the only ground
on which to posit a nation has been taken away. The state is said
to be unreal and artificial. Peoples may be the product of history;
a state can be made in a day. Ponsonby looks upon a nation as such
a construction: “A nation is not in its composition primarily a
geographical nor a racial, but a political unit.... It must be able
to uphold its independent political sovereignty.”[166] Without the
necessity for a common defense, that is, there would be no nation.
Charles Kingsley remarked in the preface to one of his books that while
there can be loyalty to a king or a queen, there cannot be loyalty to
one’s country.[167] And so it is that a “country” is an abstraction.
For the ordinary patriot at least there really is no such thing. The
country is not an individual, and there is no individuality in it for
the citizen to rest his patriotism upon. Patriotism is thus left up in
the air.
Now one is not driven to the extreme view of the nation as a “person”
in order to answer the criticisms suggested in the foregoing. That
the state is a “person” is a well-known theory. It is held by those
impressed by the philosophy of Hegel. It is reflected everywhere in the
terms they use. They talk constantly of such things as a “collective
mind” and a “general will.” But the state is not personal in the sense
in which human beings are personal. We expect a person to have a body,
a brain, and a nervous system. A state or nation has none such. But a
thing does not have to be a person in order to be an individual. Not
all individuals are personal. All individuals have inner unity. The
nation has such unity, and it is this which the philosophers feel whose
theory has just been described. They are the “unity philosophers.”
And they feel a unity in a state which they seek to describe in terms
of personality. We all feel the unity. For instance, we assume a
continuity as existent in a country. Even a democratic country must
through successive administrations employ the same policy abroad.
Only we do not feel it necessary to describe the unity in terms of
personality. The conception of organization will serve to explain the
unity we find in the nation. What the organization is like is further
to appear.
An indication that a great people forms a unit is the fact that it is a
growth. The ties that bind the nation together are, in a larger sphere,
very much like those that bind together the family and the tribe. The
ties of kinship were likely the first that bound together associations
of men. Perhaps what first appeared was an undifferentiated horde. But
at least the family must have been the first of any close associations
of men. The great majority of students are united on this point.
McDougall says: “Primitive human society was probably a comparatively
small group of near blood relatives.”[168] Green says, “Every form of
right first appeared within societies founded on kinship, these being
naturally the societies within which the constraining conception of a
common well being is first operative.”[169] Sumner’s words reflect his
view: “The kin tie, which had been the primitive mode of association
and coherence in groups, began to break down in the sixth century,
B. C., in Greece. It was superseded by the social tie of a common
religious faith and ritual. The Pythagorean and Orphic sects developed
this tie.”[170] The religious bond succeeded the kin tie in this case.
The well-knit state or _polis_ seems to have come even later. At any
rate, civil units come later than kin units, and grow out of them. The
Eskimos now have no civil organization outside of the family. But it is
only in backward areas that no larger unit than that of the family has
arisen. A process of integration has been working, and it is a process
which has resulted in nations. Spencer speaks on this point, “... In
the earliest stage of civilization, when the repulsive force is strong
and the aggressive force weak, only small communities are possible;
a modification of character causes these tribes, and satrapies,
and _gentes_ and feudal lordships, and clans, to coalesce into
nations.”[171] Friction and growing interests between families would
in some cases draw them together into a tribe; the same process would
draw tribes into a nation. The conception that holds these societies
together is that of a common well-being. But the conception first arose
in a natural group, the family, and was gradually extended through the
tribe and up to the nation. Green points out that while force has been
used in the formation of states, “it has only formed states as it has
operated in and through a pre-existing medium of political, or tribal,
or family rights.”[172] A people is a natural product of natural
forces. It at least is not an artificial creation.
Now a nation is formed when a people is organized under an institution,
a state. What of the state? Is it an artificial creation? It is charged
that states come to be ends in themselves, cut themselves off from the
people, and cause wars over artificial values.
Some philosophers, those who uphold the high sovereignty of the
state, in capital letters, really identify the state with the nation.
If this view be accepted the whole case of the critics of the state
as artificial is, of course, at once disposed of. But the state is
not identical with the nation. A state may embrace several nations.
The British empire is such a super-national state. The state is an
institutional organization. And yet there is good ground upon which to
maintain that the state is not an artificial creation. As a people is
a growth so also is the state. It is true, as is sometimes asserted,
that states can be made in a day and that there can be artificial
states, that is, states not resting upon a homogeneous people, but it
is not true that _the_ state was made in a day. As a people, the raw
material of a nation, grew out of the family and tribe units, so the
state which is the institution of a people, grew out of the political
institutions of the family and the tribe. The first institutions of
men, as for instance that of the family, were probably the result
of natural unreflective coöperation. They resulted almost as do the
effects of a natural law. The actions which gave rise to them were in
a way like the tropisms of primitive organisms. “Genuinely primitive
association must have been blind, without forethought of advantage
to those participating.”[173] Upon these unreflective associations
states grew, also without forethought on the whole, although some
reflection no doubt entered into the process. Spencer says, “Men did
not deliberately establish political arrangements, but grew into them
unconsciously--probably had no conception of an associated condition
until they found themselves in it.”[174] Men did not go about it
deliberately to form a state as represented in the contract theory
of Hobbes, but waked up to find they were in a state which had grown
out of their actions in pursuance of satisfaction for their needs.
The state did not precede man’s political character, but arose out of
it. Men recognized common rights and duties, and the state arose in
their efforts to safeguard and give expression to them. Thus Green
says, “The state, or the sovereign as a characteristic institution of
the state, does not create rights, but gives fuller reality to rights
already existing. It secures and extends the exercise of powers, which
men, influenced in dealing with each other by an idea of common good,
had recognized in each other as capable of direction to that common
good, and had already in a certain measure secured to each other in
consequence of that recognition.”[175]
The maturity of nations has come in the modern period. Likewise
patriotism, in the strong degree in which we know it, is comparatively
modern. The United States, Germany, Italy are modern states. Tribal
loyalty was once the strongest bond. But the tribe settled down to and
came to rule a definite extent of territory. Localized tribes formed
small units of government. The government was not the representative
of the will of the whole people, but expressed the will of the man or
small group of men strong enough to possess the seat of authority.
Gradually government became more representative. In time small states
arose. There were such city-states as Athens. These small states did
not organize all the people of the same race as those under their
jurisdiction. And when they were enlarged by conquest, they were
representative of only a comparatively small group near the seat of
government. All conquests were ruled from the outside and from the
height of superior power. This power became capable of tremendous
extension. The city of Rome became ruler of a large empire. Then ensued
the mediæval period in which the notion of catholicity was dominant,
and in whose political thinking the all-inclusive and sovereign empire
was the ideal. The period of nationalism had not yet come. The empires
of Rome and of Charlemagne were not nations. Their strength depended
not upon the spirit of the whole, but upon the existence of a strong
force at the center. The fact should be noted that the dialectic
toward nationalism has not been in a simple straight line. Sometimes
there have been cases of dissolution on the part of large and strong
integrations of government. But on the whole there is a pretty clear
movement toward larger and larger governmental integrations, and these
integrations have in the main been forced to follow the building up of
peoples. The mediæval empires fell. The papacy became distrusted as a
corrupt and tyrannical foreign power. The bloody chaos of feudalism
became unbearable. The Crusades acquainted men with others who were
like or unlike themselves. The Renaissance heightened the emotions of
men, and prepared the soil for nationalistic passion. Peoples became
welded together, and at the beginning of the modern period nations
emerged which took up into themselves the feudalistic establishments
and city-states which had flourished during the Middle Ages. These
nations met the needs of men, and persisted. They entrenched
themselves, and gathered force. Thus they came to the beginning of
the nineteenth century when the spirit of nationalism was fanned
into a consuming flame by the wars of Napoleon, and when again the
nationalistic passion was ministered to by the romantic movement which
aroused once more the emotional side of human nature. The crowning
height of the process has been reached at the present time when the
Great War has made nationalistic loyalty the ruling passion of mankind.
A state, then, is the outgrowth of the life of a people. The people is
a growth, and the state is an institution which has grown along with
the people. Therefore it would seem as if there were good indications
for calling each of them real.
What makes a nation? The elements of a nation show both objective
reality and inner unity. There are, roughly, three things which
enter into the makeup of a country. The first of these is a people
with a common language, customs, traditions, history, and land with
its associations. Sometimes religion has been an element. In the
case of cultured peoples, literature has also been such. “The dawn
of English nationality coincided with the dawn of a truly English
literature.”[176] We have already seen how such a people grows. It is a
natural group; it is based on instinctive association and the stress of
the struggle for existence. The instincts of patriotism are themselves
instrumental in forming the objective basis of patriotism. They make
for the solidarity of a people. This people doesn’t have to belong to
one race, for it may be made up of a fusion of races. There may be
a diversity of classes and interests within the nation. It does not
have to be absolutely homogeneous, for only a very small group indeed
could be such. Similars do not constitute a nation. A country is a
qualitative individual. A unity can be obtained in diverse elements.
The things that have been named seem to be sufficient to weld together
such a unity, a people. A people is an objective reality, and one of
the bases of a nation.
The second element is an organization, an institution, in other words,
a state. The Poles have a common language, customs, traditions, and
land, but they have no government of their own, and do not form a
nation. A nation comes into being when a state is formed by a people.
The state, if a true one, grows out of the life of the people, and is
to the people what the body is to the soul. The state and the people
form a unity. Moreover, the institution is just as real as the people
and their desires, and with the people forms the objective basis of a
nation.
The third element is that of a common consciousness. This is built upon
and implied in the conditions already named. A people and a state are
both external and internal facts. The raw material of which they are
formed is external and objective. But that raw material does not come
to its full meaning until there is added to it a consciousness in which
it is taken up in unity. There would really be no unified people and
no state, as the expression of united political life, in spite of the
external elements which are necessary to the being of people and state,
unless there existed in the individuals’ minds a common consciousness
or consciousness of community. The very existence of a common language
testifies to the existence of a common consciousness, as do common
customs, traditions, history, literature, and ideals. A land even is
something which a people possesses, and which furnishes a common bond
between the individuals of the group. There was a time when the land
was literally a common possession, in the sense that there was no
private property, but ownership is not the only way in which a people
can have a common interest in the land; there may be many associations
besides that of common ownership connected with it. Esthetic
appreciation is one of them. Affection for the scenes of childhood is
another. Esenwein, in describing the art of Gogol, the Russian author,
uses the following phrases: “Rarely do power and delicacy unite in a
stylist as they do in Gogol. For the one [power], we may find an origin
in his love for the sun-steeped and snow-blown plains of his native
Cossack country....”[177] What gifted writers have felt other more
common folk have felt also.
These things, then, imply a common consciousness. This consciousness is
a recognition and ratification of existing interrelationships, and such
a community of thought and feeling and will is fundamentally important
in the unity of a nation. “No mere interaction will constitute a social
relation. Nor yet an interaction of otherwise self-conscious agents.
Not merely must each agent know himself, he must know the others....
Unless there be on both sides a perfect consciousness of self and of
other, and of the relations of self and other--in a word, perfect
mutual understanding--there will be, so far, no completely social
relation. _A social relation is a self-conscious relation.... In other
words, society is constituted by mutual understanding_.”[178] This
understanding is that which enables the group to act as one. “Through
this mutual knowledge the group, like the individual, is enabled
to assert itself as an independent force.”[179] Mazzini understood
that the unity of a country rested upon a sense of oneness in the
minds of the people: “Country is not a mere zone of territory. The
true country is the Idea to which it gives birth; it is the thought
of love, the sense of communion which unites in one all the sons of
that territory.”[180] Here we get a suggestion regarding the unity
of Switzerland. It is, in large part, a unity in idea. That is not
saying that it has no objective basis. The Swiss have a common land and
other bonds of oneness. But the strongest bond seems to be that of a
conception of common welfare. The unity of Switzerland has, of course,
been stimulated from without. One of the most potent reasons for Swiss
unity is that of necessity for defence. They must be one to preserve
their freedom. But the fact is that whatever the stimulus was, whatever
the difficulties that stood in the way, however diverse the original
materials may have been, the Swiss are now one in the beliefs of the
individual members of the nation, and that feeling of communion is
actually unity in fact.
It is true, then, that in one way the essence of an institution is in
idea. “Perhaps the Identical, in this matter of groups, is neither a
real person nor a nominalist fiction. Let us call it an idea....”[181]
All true unity is really contributed by the mind. The external falls
apart, and becomes a mere congeries and not a unity when not held
together in idea. The external elements form the materials for a unity;
they make up the basis of an institution; they aid in giving rise to a
common consciousness; but it is the common consciousness itself that is
the essence of the unity. In this way the will to individuality as an
inner fact will in turn make for individuality in objective reality.
Only, it should be noted on the other hand, when the unity is based on
external grounds, it is not a mere fiction, and is not left up in the
air.
To have a common consciousness, the individuals of a group do not have
to be acquainted by sense experience with all their land or its people.
Imagination and sympathy are means by which men feel themselves one of
a society and parts of an institution. And if, even after imagination
and sympathy have come to one’s help, a country and its ideals are said
to be abstract and vague, even so, it is such abstract things that
become a cause, and it is such vague ideals that have the greatest
motive power. They possess us. We think with them rather than of them,
and they become a spirit in which we approach all things. It is not
necessary that we should have an exact formula of them in order to make
them real. Realities do not only then come to exist when we have a
clear-cut formula for them, nor do ideas first have being when they are
put into formal expression.
One quest of men has been, consciously or unconsciously, to create
for themselves a unified world. In doing this they have, among other
things, formed themselves into nations. Nations have met their needs,
and helped them to feel at home in their world. Countries are real, and
come close home. With this in mind we can appreciate the feeling of
the traveler abroad who has a sense of the wholeness of his home-land
and longs for it. The following quotation is an illustration of this
feeling at the same time that it catalogues some of the elements that
go into the makeup of a country. “Every time his passport is presented,
every time he enters a new dominion or crosses a new frontier, every
time he is delayed at the custom-house, or questioned by a policeman,
or challenged by a sentinel, every time he is perplexed by a new
language, or puzzled by a new variety of coinage or currency,--he
thanks his God with fresh fervency that through all the length
and breadth of that land, beyond the swelling floods, which he is
privileged and proud to call his own land, there is a common language,
a common currency, a common Constitution, common laws and liberties, a
common inheritance of glory from the past, and, if it be only true to
itself, a common destiny of glory for the future!”[182]
Is there anything to indicate that the organizing principles of a
nation are permanently necessary ones? The ultimate existence and value
of patriotism will be involved in the answer to that question. Is
patriotism called for by the fundamental order of reality?
One of the essential centers of life is a community, a neighborhood,
those who live near enough to one another that the interests of their
lives are closely interwoven by the fact of association in space. This
would seem to be a self-evident proposition. Mazzini hit the truth when
he said that mankind had been placed in groups or nuclei upon the face
of the earth. The community is an irreducible minimum of association
among mankind. It is a permanent association, and the sentiments that
grow out of it will be permanent. There is true reason why one of the
fundamental virtues is that of being a good neighbor. And Veblen was
right in saying, “Even with no patriotism, love of country, and use
and wont as it runs in one’s home area and among one’s own people,
would not pass.”[183] Patriotism seems to be vitally connected with a
permanent sentiment, community spirit.
A community is attached to the soil. It has its basis in a local area.
That is what makes a community. In other words, it is organized upon
the geographical principle. The geographical principle is one of the
permanently necessary principles of human association. Now a nation
is so associated. A country must have a territory, and it is the only
institution of which this can be said. “A nation ... is primarily a
group of men and women related physically.... The state represents not
the common interests of those who are intellectual, or musical, or
religious, but chiefly the common interest of those who live in the
same district.”[184] Patriotism is loyalty to one’s _native land_. At
least one fundamental principle of a country is a permanent one, the
geographical principle. We have here a suggestion as to why the soil
is so important in patriotism. Patriotism is nourished by the soil.
The soil not only is what sustains the vital economic interests of
those who live upon it, but is the basis of the existence of the nation
itself. Without the land, and land is _country_, there would be no
patriotism.
There has arisen of late the contention that it would be better
to do away with the geographical principle of government. Russell
says, “There is no reason why all governmental units should be
geographical.”[185] It is felt that if geographical frontiers were
destroyed the cause of peace would be furthered. “When civil war breaks
out in a country, no real fighting is possible until the contending
factions are organized on separate territory.”[186] It is worse when
trouble with another country arises. “In domestic affairs we live
with and know the men who disagree with us; in foreign affairs the
opposition lives behind a frontier, and probably speaks a different
language.”[187] But it is not clear that we shall gain anything by
heeding these suggestions to obliterate national frontiers. The
substitute planned is that of syndicalistic organizations. But under
such an arrangement frontiers would be infinitely multiplied. Men of
conflicting loyalties and interests would be in touch everywhere. It
would simply be an exchange of one antagonism for another. And class
wars would be no better than nationalistic wars. It would be no better
to have class against class than nation against nation. So what we come
back to is governmental organization upon the geographical principle.
And this means that we come back to some such unit as the nation. And
why not? Environment makes people alike, and to have a homogeneous
people is one of the necessities of a successful government. Moreover,
we must form an attachment somewhere, else live entirely alone. And it
is right to begin where we are.
“God gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all.”
We have said that the territorial arrangement is an inescapable
one in government, and that the community is a unit below which we
cannot go. But there cannot help but be interests growing up between
communities. And historically these interests have led to association
of communities. Rivalry and friction arise. War follows. The mediæval
city-states fought with one another. New York and New Jersey are
rivals; the writer recalls one occasion when New Jersey was threatening
suit against New York for befouling the Hudson River. The only
safeguard against internecine warfare between communities is a more
comprehensive power. So a larger unit grows. And these units must be
still further integrated. The process will not stop until it comes to
the nation with its government, the state. How much further it will go
will be disclosed by future events.
Is the state a permanently necessary institution? The principle of
integration embodied in the state is a fundamental one. It is the
principle of coöperation for coöperation. The good of any institution
is that of coöperation for some end. The primary end of the state is
that of coöperation itself. Its purpose is that of enabling men to live
and work together in peace. Loyalty to the national group is loyalty to
the principle of human coöperation. The most valuable thing about the
state is not that it does this or that, but that it gets men working
together. It provides the setting for further cooperation. In its
protection against enemies either within or without the group, it is
acting to keep the coöperation of the members of the group from being
interfered with.
Thus it will be seen that the state is essentially a peace unit. There
are those who deny this. There are two theories of the state. One is
that it is a peace unit. The other is that it is a war unit. It is,
according to this latter view, organized for the waging of war. Because
of this latter view there has been of late a great deal of opposition
to and criticism of the state. It is alleged that all the other things
besides fighting which the state once did have been taken over by other
agencies better fitted to do them, and that really the only thing which
the state now has as its purpose is that of declaring and making war.
The citizens coöperate in the state only when they have a fight on with
another state. But it may be replied that it is hardly fair to charge
all our troubles in war to the state. Wars have been waged where there
was no state in the modern sense; they have been carried on by other
agencies than states; and states have lived together peaceably. Savage
individuals, savage tribes, feudal barons have all fought. Race riots
have given vent to hatred. Representatives of labor and capital have
fought pitched battles. The United States and Canada have lived side
by side without ever having found it necessary to declare war or even
fortify the frontier.
And the state is really a peace unit. It exists primarily for the
purpose of keeping order within the area of its jurisdiction. It
becomes apparent here how some of the beliefs of patriotism are
well-founded. The state is needed as the protector of one’s self.
In the Middle Ages, in the absence of any other agency to provide
protection, there grew up voluntary associations, founded and operated
usually by warriors, and called _regna_, whose business it was to keep
the peace. Here was an attempt to do the work of the state. But the
attempt failed, and there are now no such organizations. One would not
miss the mark far in hazarding the opinion that they failed because
they did not represent a peace unit composed of an integrated people
occupying a given extent of territory. What has been said here would
indicate that what we need to do is so to extend the integration of
society that the whole world will be a peace unit. The whole problem of
keeping peace should be made an internal problem. There should be no
foes without.
The state is the ultimate protector of all the values of life. The
citizen was right when he believed that his earthly salvation depended
upon his state. The state itself does not usually furnish the goods
of life, although it does on occasion furnish them. That is not its
primary business. It does not even guarantee the goods of life. Much,
of course, depends upon the individual himself. But the just state
does ultimately protect the individual in all rightful opportunities
in which he as an individual or in voluntary association with others
cannot protect himself. The civilized life itself at present depends
upon the state. The very word “civilization” is derived from a term
meaning “state.” It is that which is possible where there is a settled
order provided by the state. One can imagine what the state means if
he pictures himself at the fringe of civilization where he would miss
the many values of life which the state makes possible. The state does
its work for the most part noiselessly, but it is just because it is so
efficient that it is so noiseless. We are not conscious of its working,
and therefore assume that it is otiose. But it is with us all the time,
and providing the opportunity for all the values of life. The state
is a kind of second nature which does not guarantee happy living, but
offers the opportunities for such a life.
The state does, however, go beyond its primary purpose. It has not,
as a matter of fact, been restricted purely to acting the part of
policeman or night-watchman. Philosophers have disputed a good deal
about the functions of the state. But when all is said and done it has
been found necessary for the state to engage in some activities which
were not purely those of providing protection, but were designed to
promote positively the general welfare. The state truly, as Aristotle
said, even though it has originated in the bare needs of life, has
continued for the sake of the good life. The state strives to aid
men in a positive way. Some community interests thought to be in
the province of the state are those of education, transportation,
communication, sanitation, taxation, and the maintenance of economic
justice. And this positive character of the state’s functions renders
patriotism all the more strongly entrenched.
As already has been intimated, syndicalistic organizations are being
put forward as rivals of the state. Industry is one of the chief
interests of men, and is especially virulent at the present time.
There are those who would organize society according to occupation.
And when society was completely organized in this way there would be,
so it is thought, no further excuse for the existence of the state.
All the legitimate common concerns of men would be taken care of by
syndicalistic organizations. The economic arguments for or against
syndicalism are of secondary importance in this connection; the point
of interest is that which bears on syndicalism as a principle of
government. Graham Wallas has studied these questions. He points to
the mediæval experience under the guild system. He says that quarrels
between the crafts were rife, as were quarrels between the craftsmen
and the merchants; that the people hated strangers as well as the
police; that the public health was neglected; and that the cities
found it impossible to keep order in their own streets during a trade
dispute.[188] The fact is that the growth of power on the part of Labor
and Capital and the conflicts arising because of that power render the
state more necessary rather than less so.
There is a true sense in which the state embodies the general will.
It is, in the area of its jurisdiction, the representatives not of a
class, but of all the people living in that area. It is the repository
of the collective will of its citizens. Therefore, it is fitted to
keep the peace, and to be for the purpose of keeping peace, the user
of force. The cry has been raised, “Why is the state armed? No other
institution feels it necessary to be equipped with an armament.” But
the truth is that it is just because the state is armed that no other
institution needs to be. One police force is enough. We shall always
need the state to keep other institutions in harmony. And institutions
which exist for other purposes than that of the maintenance of law and
order will have to submit to regulation by the state for the sake of
law and order. It will be the state’s business, among other things, to
maintain a democracy of institutions.
The state, because of the generality of its character, plays an
important role in federating the loyalties of men. Economic interests,
religious interests, and so on, do not exhaust the catalogue of human
activities. Each individual will have touch with other individuals with
whom he would not outside the state be organized in any institution.
One may have a neighbor who is of another trade or church. The state
brings one into a common life with his neighbors. The state’s character
as a power helps it to occupy this role as federator of loyalties. It
is back of all the institutions of life; it sustains them. Consequently
the loyalties given to the other institutions tend to head up in the
state. It is a universal, too, because its unifying principle, that of
space, is so universal. Such a principle is very general, and may be
empty unless enriched by many differentiations within itself; the life
that it unifies may be very meagre without those differentiations, but
generality is akin to universality, and just because the principle is
so general, it may act as a unifier of many in one. A loyalty that
shall be an organizer of all loyalties is needed. For the individual,
even after he is a member of all the voluntary organizations to which
he is eligible, there ought to be that which will unify his whole
life. So likewise there ought to be that which will unify the whole
of mankind. The state and the church seem to be the only institutions
which in ideal are capable of achieving these results. And at the
present time we seem nearer a universal political than religious
unification of mankind. Human nature is a long way from being ready to
warrant putting one’s trust in it as the guarantee of peace and justice
because each human being loves his neighbor as himself. At any rate,
the state will have a fundamental purpose as an integration of mankind
for so long a time to come that it may be said to be permanently
necessary. The character of the state as being the condition of all the
values of civilized life, the embodiment of the general will, and the
federator of human loyalties, throws light upon the phenomenon that
when the state calls the individual every other loyalty must go.
The state seems still to be entitled to its place in the sun. But we
must keep ourselves at the point where we can criticize our political
loyalties. Some states on occasion need reform. The morality of nations
must be criticized. States have grown in response to the needs of human
beings. They must be kept subservient to those needs. The state is not
divine. There is no divine right of kings, and there is no divine right
of states, except as these institutions meet the real needs of real
human beings. The state has justified its existence, but that doesn’t
mean that the existence of any particular kind of state is justified.
In other words, patriotism seems to be necessitated by the fundamental
order of reality. Its existence is justified. Patriotism is essentially
a fundamental human good. But that fact doesn’t justify all that is
found in patriotism. Consequently, the problem is not only to evaluate
patriotism as an essential ideal, but also to criticize the faults and
virtues of its different forms. Something of that criticism will be the
effort of the concluding chapter.