THE NATIONAL QUESTION FROM THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW
The work of embodying perfect morality in the collective whole of
mankind is hindered, in addition to individual passions and vices, by
the inveterate forms of collective evil which act like a contagion.
In spite of the slow but sure progress in the life of humanity, that
evil shows itself now, as it did of old, in a threefold hostility, a
threefold immoral relation--between different nations, between society
and the criminal, between the different classes of society. Listen to
the way in which the French speak of the Germans, the Portuguese of
the Dutch, the Chinese of the English, and Americans of the Chinese.
Consider the thoughts and feelings of the audience at a criminal trial,
the behaviour of a crowd using lynch law in America, or settling
accounts with a witch or a horse-stealer in Russia. Hear or read the
remarks exchanged between socialist workmen and representatives of
the propertied classes at meetings, and in the newspapers. It will
then become evident that apart from the anomalies of the personal
will we must also take into account the power of the superpersonal
or collective hostility in its three aspects. The national, the
penal and the socially economic questions have, independently of all
considerations of internal and external policy, a special interest for
the moral consciousness. To deal with them from this point of view is
all the more essential, because a new and worse evil has been added
of late to the calamity of the hereditary disease--namely, the rash
attempt to cure it by preaching new forms of social violence on the
one hand, and a passive disintegration of humanity into its individual
units on the other.
I
Man’s relation to nationality is in our day generally determined in
two ways: as _nationalistic_ or as _cosmopolitan_. There may be many
shades and transition stages in the domain of feeling and of taste, but
there are only two clear and definite points of view. The first may be
formulated as follows: _We must love our own nation and serve it by all
the means at our command, and to other nations we may be indifferent.
If their interests conflict with ours, we must take up a hostile
attitude to the foreign nations._ The essence of the cosmopolitan view
is this: _Nationality is merely a natural fact, devoid of all moral
significance; we have no duties to the nation as such (neither to our
own nor to any other); our duty is only to individual men without any
distinction of nationality._
It is at once apparent that neither view expresses the right attitude
towards the fact of national difference. The first ascribes to this
fact an absolute significance which it cannot possess, and the second
deprives it of all significance. It will be easily seen also that each
view finds its justification solely in the _negative_ aspect of the
_opposite_ view.
No rational believer in cosmopolitanism would, of course, find fault
with the adherents of nationalism for loving their own country. He
would only blame them for thinking that it is permissible, and in some
cases even obligatory, to hate and despise men of a different race
and nationality. In the same way the most ardent nationalist will
not, unless he is altogether devoid of reason, attack the champions
of cosmopolitanism for demanding justice for other nations, but will
accuse them of being indifferent to their own. So that in each of
these views even its direct opponents cannot help distinguishing the
good side from the bad, and the question naturally arises whether
these two sides are necessarily connected. Does love for one’s own
people necessarily imply the view that all means of serving it are
permissible, and justify an indifferent and hostile relation to other
nations? Does the same _moral_ relation to all human beings necessarily
mean indifference to nationality in general, and to one’s own in
particular?
The first question is easily solved by analysing the content of the
idea of true patriotism or love for one’s country. The necessity for
such an elementary analysis will be recognised by every one. For every
one will agree that patriotism may be _irrational_, do harm instead of
the intended good, and lead nations to disaster; that patriotism may be
_vain_, and based on unfounded pretensions; and, finally, that it may
be directly _false_, and serve merely as a cloak for low and selfish
motives. In what, then, does true or real patriotism consist?
When we really love some one, we wish and strive to obtain for them
both moral and material good,--the latter, however, only on condition
of the former. To every one whom I love I wish, among other things,
material prosperity, provided, of course, that it is attained by
honourable means and made good use of. But if, when my friend is
in need, I were to assist him in making his fortune by fraud, even
supposing that he would be certain to escape punishment--or, if he
were a writer, and I advised him to increase his literary fame by a
successful plagiarism, I should be rightly considered by every one to
be either a madman or a scoundrel, and certainly not a good friend.
It is clear then that the goods which love leads us to desire for our
neighbours differ both in their external character and in their inner
meaning for the will. Spiritual goods exclude, by the very conception
of them, the possibility of being attained by bad means; one cannot
steal moral dignity, or plunder justice, or appropriate benevolence.
These goods are _unconditionally_ desirable. Material goods, which,
from the nature of the case, admit of bad means, are on the contrary
desirable _on condition_ that such means are not used, _i.e._ on
condition that material ends are subordinate to the moral end.
Up to a certain point every one will agree with this elementary truth.
Every one would grant that it is wrong to enrich oneself at the cost of
a crime, or to enrich a friend, one’s own or his family, or even one’s
town or province at the cost of a crime. But this elementary moral
truth which is as clear as day suddenly becomes dim and altogether
obscure as soon as we get to _one’s country_. Everything becomes
permissible in the service of its supposed interests, the purpose
justifies the means, the black becomes white, falsehood is preferred
to truth, violence is extolled as a virtue. Nationality here becomes
the final end, the highest good and the standard of good for human
activity. Such undue glorification is, however, purely illusory, and
is in truth degrading to the nation. The highest human goods cannot,
as we have seen, be attained by immoral means. By admitting bad means
into our service of the nation and by _justifying_ them we limit the
national interest to the lower material goods which may be obtained
and preserved by wrong and evil methods. This is a direct _injury_ to
the very nation we wish to serve. It means transferring the centre of
gravity of the national life from the higher sphere to the lower, and
serving national _egoism_ under the guise of serving the nation. The
moral worthlessness of _such_ nationalism is proved by history itself.
There is abundant evidence that nations prospered and were great only
so long as they did not make themselves their final end, but served
the higher, the _universal_ ideal ends. History shows also that the
very conception of the nation as a final and ultimate bearer of the
collective life of humanity is ill-founded.
II
The division of humanity into definite and stable groups possessing
a national character is a fact which is neither universal nor first
in the order of time. Not to speak of savages and barbarians, who are
still living in separate families, clans or nomadic bands, division
into nations did not exclusively predominate even in the civilised
part of humanity when the tribe was finally superseded by the ‘city’
or ‘country.’ The country and the nation, though more or less closely
associated, do not altogether coincide. In the ancient world we
find hardly any clear division into nations at all. We find either
independent civic communities, _i.e._ groups smaller than the nation
and united politically only and not by the bond of nationality--such
as the cities of Phoenicia, Greece and Italy--or, on the contrary,
groups larger than the nation--the so-called ‘world empires’ which
included many peoples, from the Assyro-Babylonic down to the Roman.
In these crude precursors of the universal unity of mankind national
considerations had merely a material significance and were not the
determining factor. The idea of nationality as the supreme principle
of life found neither the time nor the place for its application in
the ancient world. The opposition between one’s own people and aliens
was then far more sharp and ruthless than it is now, but it was not
determined by nationality. In the kingdom of Darius and Xerxes men of
different race and nationality were all regarded as members of one
body, since they were equally subject to one common authority and one
supreme law. Enemies or aliens were the men who were _not yet_ brought
under the rule of ‘the great king.’ On the other hand, in Greece, the
fact that Spartans and Athenians spoke the same language, had the
same gods and realised that they belonged to the same nation, did not
prevent them from treating each other as foreigners throughout their
history, or even from being mortal enemies. Similar relations held
between other cities or civic communities of Greece, and only once in a
thousand years did the true national or pan-Greek patriotism actively
show itself, namely, during the Persian war. The coincidence--and that
only an approximate one--between practical solidarity and national
character hardly lasted for forty years, and was superseded by a
fierce and prolonged slaughter of the Greeks by the Greeks during
the Peloponnesian war. This state of deadly struggle between small
communities belonging to one and the same nation was considered
perfectly normal and continued up to the moment when all these
communities together lost their independence. They lost it not in order
to form a national unity, but in order that the Greek nation might,
under the power of foreign kings, immediately pass from its state of
political disruption to becoming the uniting and civilising element in
the whole of the ancient world. The opposition between fellow-citizens
and aliens (_i.e._ inhabitants of another city, though a Greek one)
had now lost its meaning as a supreme political principle, and was not
replaced by the opposition between their own and other nations. What
remained was the wider opposition between Hellenism and barbarism,
meaning by the former participation in the higher intellectual and
æsthetic culture, and not necessarily the fact of being a Greek by
birth, or of using the Greek language. Not even the most arrogant
of Greeks ever regarded Horace and Vergil, Augustus or Mæcenas as
barbarians. Indeed the founders of the Hellenic ‘world empire’
themselves--the Macedonian kings Philip and Alexander, were not Greeks
in the ethnographical sense. And it was owing to these two foreigners
that Greeks immediately passed from the narrow local patriotism of
separate civic communities to the consciousness of themselves as
bearers of a world-wide culture, without ever returning to the stage
of the national patriotism of the Persian wars. As to Rome, the whole
of Roman history was a continuous transition from the policy of a city
to the policy of a world Empire--_ab urbe ad orbem_--without pausing
at a purely national stage. When Rome was defending herself against
the Punic invasion, she was merely the most powerful of the Italian
cities. When she crushed her enemy, she imperceptibly overstepped
the ethnographical and the geographical boundaries of Latinism and
became conscious of herself as a moving force in the world-history,
anticipating by two centuries the poet’s reminder--
But, Rome, ’tis thine alone, with awful sway,
To rule mankind and make the world obey.
Disposing peace and war thy own majestic way,
To tame the proud, the fetter’d slave to free.
Roman citizenship soon became accessible to all, and the formula ‘Rome
for the Romans’ appealed to no one on the banks of the Tiber: Rome was
for the world.
While Alexanders and Cæsars were politically abolishing in East
and West the vague limits of nationality, cosmopolitanism as a
philosophical doctrine was developed and disseminated by the
representatives of the two most popular schools of thought--the
wandering Cynics and the dispassionate Stoics. They preached the
supremacy of nature and reason, the unity underlying all existence
and the insignificance of all artificial and historical limitations
and divisions. They taught that man by his very nature and therefore
_every_ man had a supreme destination and dignity, consisting in
freedom from external affections, errors and passions, in the steadfast
courage of the man who “if the whole world were dashed to fragments,
would remain serene among the ruins.”[120] Hence they inevitably
recognised all the externally given determinations, social, national,
etc., as conventional and illusory. Roman jurisprudence,[121] in
its own sphere and from its own point of view, also supported the
philosophical ideas of natural and therefore universal reason, of
virtue which is the same for all, and of the equality of human rights.
As a result of this collective intellectual work the conception ‘Roman’
became identical with the conception of ‘universal,’ both in its
external range of application and in its inner content.[122]
III
At the beginning of the Christian era the Jewish people were the
only one within the civilised world of antiquity who had a strong
national consciousness. But in their case it was intimately associated
with their religion, with the true feeling of its inner superiority
and a presentiment of world-wide historical destiny. The national
consciousness of the Jews had no real satisfaction; it lived by hopes
and expectations. The short-lived greatness of David and Solomon was
idealised and transformed into a golden age. But the vital historical
instinct of the people who were the first to evolve a philosophy of
history (in the book of Daniel on the world empires and on the kingdom
of truth of the Son of man) did not allow them to stop at the glorified
image of the past and made them transfer their ideal into the future.
This ideal, however, had from the first certain features of universal
significance, and when, by the inspiration of the prophets, it was
transferred to the future it became finally free from all narrow
nationalistic limitations. Isaiah proclaimed the Christ as the banner
that is to gather all nations round Himself, and the author of the book
of Daniel entirely adopted the point of view of _universal_ history.
This universalistic conception of the Messiah, expressing the true
national self-consciousness of the Jews as the finest ideal flower
of the spirit of the people, was held only by the elect few. When
the banner for all the peoples was, as foretold by the prophets,
raised in Jerusalem and Galilee, the majority of the Jews with their
official leaders (the Sadducees), and partly with their unofficial
teachers (the Pharisees), proved to be on the side of the national
and religious exclusiveness as against the highest realisation of the
prophetic ideal. The inevitable conflict and breach between these two
tendencies--these ‘two souls,’[123] as it were--of the Jewish people
sufficiently explains (from the purely historical point of view) the
great tragedy of Golgotha, with which Christianity began.[124]
It would, however, be an obvious mistake to associate Christianity
with the principle of cosmopolitanism. There was no occasion for the
Apostles to preach against nationality. The dangerous and immoral
aspect of national divisions, namely, mutual hatred and malignant
struggle, no longer existed within the limits of the ‘universe’[125]
of that day; Roman peace--_pax Romana_--had abolished wars between
nations. Christian universalism was directed against other and more
profound divisions, which remained in full force in practical life
in spite of the ideas of the prophets, the philosophers, and the
jurists. There remained the distinction of religion between Judaism
and paganism, the distinction of culture between Hellenism (which
included educated Romans) and barbarism, and, finally, the worst
distinction--the socially-economic one--between freemen and slaves. It
had retained all its force in practice, in spite of the theoretical
protests of the Stoics. These divisions were in direct opposition
to the moral principle--which was not the case with the national
distinctions of that time. The latter had in the Roman Empire as
innocent a character as, for instance, the provincialism of Gascogne
or Brittany has in modern France. But the opposition between the
Jews and the Gentiles, the Hellenes and the barbarians, freemen and
slaves, involved the denial of all solidarity between them; it was
an opposition of the higher beings to the lower, the lower having
their moral dignity and human rights denied to them.[126] This is the
reason why St. Paul had to proclaim that in Jesus Christ there is
neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, but a new creation--a
_new_ creation, however, and not simple reduction of the old to one
denominator. In the place of the negative ideal of the dispassionate
Stoic unmoved by the downfall of the world, the Apostle puts the
positive ideal of a man full of compassion and at one with all that
lives, who shares in the sufferings of the universal man, Christ, and
in His death that redeems the world, and therefore participates in
His triumph over death and in the salvation of the whole world. In
Christianity the mind passes from the abstract _man in general_ of
the philosophers and jurists to the concrete _universal_ man. The old
hostility and estrangement between different sections of humanity is
thereby completely abolished. _Every_ man, if only he lets ‘Christ
be formed in him,’[127] _i.e._ if he enters into the spirit of the
perfect man, and determines all his life and activity by the ideal
revealed in the image of Christ, participates in the Godhead through
the power of the Son of God abiding in him. For the regenerated man
individuality, like all other characteristics and distinctions,
including that of nationality, ceases to be a _limit_, and becomes the
basis of positive union with the collective all-embracing humanity or
Church (in its true nature), which is complementary to him. According
to the well-known saying of St. Paul the peculiarities of structure
and of function which distinguish a given bodily organ from other
organs do not separate it from them and from the rest of the body, but
on the contrary are the basis of its definite positive participation
in the life of the organism, and make it of unique value to all the
other organs and the body as a whole. Likewise in the ‘body of Christ’
individual peculiarities do not separate one person from others, but
unite each with all, being the ground of his special significance for
all and of his positive interaction with them. Now this obviously
applies to nationality as well. The _all-embracing humanity_ (or the
Church which the Apostle preached) is not an abstract idea, but is _a
harmonious union of all the concrete positive characteristics of the
new or the regenerated creation_. It therefore includes the _national_
as well as the _personal_ characteristics. The body of Christ is a
_perfect_ organism and cannot consist of simple cells alone; it must
contain larger and more complex organs, which in this connection are
naturally represented by the different nations. The difference between
the personal and the national character is not one of principle[128]
but of greater stability and wider range in the case of the latter.
Since Christianity does not demand absence of individual character, it
cannot demand absence of national character. The spiritual regeneration
it demands both of individuals and of nations does not mean a loss
of the natural qualities and powers; it means that these qualities
are transformed, that a new direction and a new content are given
them. When Peter and John were regenerated by the spirit of Christ,
they did not lose any of their positive peculiarities and distinct
characteristic features. So far from losing their individuality, they
developed and strengthened it. This is how it must be with entire
nations converted to Christianity.
Actual adoption of the true religion containing the unconditional
principle of morality must sweep away a great deal from the national as
well as from the individual life. But that which is incompatible with
the unconditional principle and has therefore to be destroyed does not
constitute a positive characteristic or peculiarity. There is such a
thing as collective evil will, as historical sin burdening the national
conscience, as a wrong direction of the life and activity of a nation.
From all these wrongs a nation must set itself free, but such freedom
can only strengthen it, and increase and widen the expression of its
positive character.
The first preachers of the Gospel had no reason to occupy themselves
with the national question which the life of humanity had not yet
brought to the fore, since there were hardly any distinct, independent
nations conscious of themselves as such on the historical arena of the
time. Nevertheless we find in the New Testament definite indications
of _a positive_ attitude to nationality. The words spoken to the
Samaritan woman, “_salvation is of the Jews_,”[129] and the preliminary
direction to the disciples, “go rather to the lost sheep of the house
of Israel,”[130] clearly show Christ’s love for His own people. And
His final command to the Apostles, “Go ye therefore, and teach _all
nations_,”[131] implies that even outside Israel He contemplated not
separate individuals only, but entire peoples.[132] When St. Paul
became the Apostle of the Gentiles he did not thereupon become a
cosmopolitan. Though separated from the majority of his compatriots in
the all-important question of religion, he was not indifferent to his
people and their special destination:
“I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me
witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continual
sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from
Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: who are
Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the
covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the
promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh,
Christ came.... Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for
Israel is, that they might be saved.”[133]
IV
Before they could realise the ideal of universal humanity, nations had
first to be formed as distinct independent bodies. Let us consider
this process with special reference to Western Europe, where it is
finally completed. The Apostles’ successors, to whom the command to
teach all nations was handed down, soon came to deal with nations
in their infancy, standing in need of elementary upbringing before
they could be taught. The Church nurtured them conscientiously
and with self-sacrificing devotion, and then continued to act as
their guardian, making them pass through a school that was somewhat
one-sided though not bad. The historical childhood and youth of the
Romano-Germanic nations under the guardianship of the Roman Catholic
Church--the so-called Middle Ages--did not end in anything like a
normal way. The spiritual authorities failed to observe that their
nurslings had come of age, and, from natural human weakness, insisted
on treating them in the same old way. The anomalies and changes that
arose from this fact have no bearing on our subject. What is of
importance to us is the phenomenon which took place in the development
of every European nation. It undoubtedly indicates a certain general
ethico-historical law, for it was manifested under the most various and
often directly opposed conditions.
For reasons sufficiently obvious Italy was the first of European
countries to attain to national self-consciousness. The Lombard League
in the middle of the twelfth century clearly indicates national
awakening. The external struggle, however, was only an impetus that
called to life the true forces of the Italian genius. At the beginning
of the next century the newly-born Italian language was used by St.
Francis to express ideas and feelings of universal significance that
could be understood by Buddhists and Christians alike. At the same
period began Italian painting (Cimabue), and at the beginning of the
fourteenth century appeared Dante’s comprehensive poem, which would
alone have been sufficient to make Italy great. From the fourteenth
to the seventeenth centuries Italy, torn asunder by the hostilities
between the cities and the podestas, the Pope and the Emperor, the
French and the Spanish, produced all for which humanity loves and
values her, all, of which Italians may justly pride themselves. All
these immortal works of the philosophical and scientific, poetical and
artistic genius had the same value for other nations, for the world
as a whole as for the Italians themselves. Men to whom Italy’s true
greatness was due were no doubt real patriots. They set the greatest
value upon their country, but it was not in their case an empty
claim leading to false and immoral demands--they embodied the lofty
significance of Italy in works of absolute value. They did not consider
it true and beautiful to affirm themselves and their nationality, but
they _directly_ affirmed themselves in what is true and beautiful.
Their works were good not because they glorified Italy, but rather
they glorified Italy because they were good in themselves--good _for
all_. Under such conditions patriotism stands in no need of defence
and justification. It justifies itself in practice, evincing itself
as creative _power_ and not as fruitless reflection or ‘excitement of
idle thought.’ Corresponding to the inner intensity of the creative
work at this blossoming time of Italy was the wide extension of the
Italian race at that period. Its civilising influence extended to the
Crimea in the East and Scotland in the North-West. The first European
to penetrate to Mongolia and China was Marco Polo, an Italian. Another
Italian discovered the new world, and the third, enlarging that
discovery, left it his name. The literary influence of Italy was for
several centuries prevalent throughout Europe. Italian poetry, epic and
lyric, and the Italian novel were examples for imitation. Shakespeare
took from the Italians the subjects and the form of his plays. The
ideas of Giordano Bruno roused philosophical reflection both in England
and in Germany. The Italian language and Italian fashions universally
prevailed in the higher classes of society. And while the national
creative work and influence were at their highest, Italians were
obviously concerned not with keeping Italy for themselves--at that time
indeed it was for any one who liked to take it--but only with things
which made them be something for others and gave them a universal
significance. They cared for the objective ideas of beauty and
truth, which through their national spirit received a new and worthy
expression. What conception of nationality can be logically deduced
from this? It cannot be said, with Italy’s national history before us,
that nationality is something self-existent and self-contained, living
in itself and for itself, for this great nation proves to be simply a
special form of universal content, living _in_ that content, filled
with it and embodying it not for itself only but _for all_.
The _Spanish_ nation developed under very peculiar conditions. For
seven centuries Spain was the vanguard on the right flank of the
Christian world in its struggle with Mohammedanism. And just when the
left flank--Byzantium--was overthrown by the enemy, on the right flank
Spaniards won a final and decisive victory. This long and successful
struggle was justly regarded as the national glory of Spain. It is not
permissible for a Christian people to hate and despise Mohammedans--or
any one else--or seek to exterminate them; but to defend Europe
against invasion by them was a direct Christian duty. For in so far
as Christianity, in spite of all its historical perversions, contains
absolute truth, to which the future belongs, in so far the defence
even of the external boundaries of Christian faith and culture against
the destructive violence of the armed hordes of unbelievers is an
unquestionable merit from the point of view of humanity. Apart from the
question of religious belief, would it have been a gain for historical
progress had Western Europe met with the fate of Western Asia or of
the Balkan Peninsula?[134] In defending themselves against the Moors
the Spaniards were serving the common cause of humanity, and they
knew it. They would not dream of saying ‘Spain is for the Spaniards,’
for in that case why should they not go further and say ‘Castile is
for the Castilians, Arragon is for the Arragonians,’ etc.? They felt,
they thought, and they proclaimed that Spain was for all Christendom,
as Christianity was for all the world. Their feeling was perfectly
genuine, they really wished to serve their religion as a universal
religion, as the highest good for all, and one can only reproach
them with having a wrong or a one-sided conception of Christianity.
The continuous struggle for a common and just cause lasted for seven
centuries, and, being chiefly an external struggle waged by the force
of arms,[135] it created both the strength and the narrowness of the
national spirit of Spain. More than any other nation the Spaniards
distorted the truth of Christianity in their practical conception of it
and in their actions; more decisively than any one they associated it
with violence. According to the general custom of the Middle Ages, the
Spaniards based their practical view of the world upon the distinction
between the two swords--the spiritual sword of the monks under the rule
of the Pope, and the worldly sword of the knights under the rule of the
king. But in their case--more than in the case of any other nation--the
two swords were so closely connected as to become essentially alike.
The spiritual sword proved in the end to be as material and violent as
the worldly, though more painful and less noble than the latter. The
special part played by the Spanish nation in this respect is shown by
the fact that the Inquisition had twice been started by Spaniards--by
the monk Dominique in the thirteenth, and the king Ferdinand in the
fifteenth century.[136]
The struggle of Spanish knights with the bellicose Mohammedan invaders
was a gain to Christianity and the source of the greatness of Spain.
The work of the ‘spiritual sword’ against the _conquered_ Moors and
defenceless Jews was treason to the spirit of Christ, a disgrace to
Spain and the first cause of its downfall. The bitter fruits of the
fatal historical sin did not ripen at once. In following its old path
of external service to the Christian faith Spain did one good thing
more for the common cause--namely, she spread Christianity beyond the
ocean. Spanish knights and pirates acquired for Christian culture,
such as it was, the greater part of the new world. They saved a
whole country (Mexico) from such abominations and horrors of satanic
heathendom[137] as cause even the horrors of the Inquisition to fade
(and the Inquisition itself was abolished soon after). They founded in
Southern and Central America a dozen new States which take some part
in the common historical life of humanity. At the same time Spanish
missionaries--a real saint like the Jesuit Francis Xavier among
them--were the first to carry the Gospel to India and Japan. Spain,
however, still regarded as its main task the defence of Christianity
(as she understood it, _i.e._ of the Roman Church) from its immediate
and most dangerous enemies. In the fifteenth century it found such
enemies no longer in the Mohammedans but in the Protestants. At the
present time we can look upon the Reformation as a necessary moment
in the history of Christianity itself. But for people who lived at
that epoch it was impossible to take this view. They either themselves
became Protestants or regarded Protestantism as a hostile attack,
proceeding from the devil, against the Christian truth embodied in
the Church. For Spain, whose whole history was bound up with the
Catholic idea, there could be no choice. All the strength of the
most powerful country of the time was directed to crushing the new
religious movement. It was a work wrong in principle, revoltingly cruel
in practice, and a hopeless failure in its result. The moral guilt
of Spain, which made the Duke of Alba her national and ‘Christian’
hero, is beyond all doubt. One can only point to some extenuating
circumstances. The Spanish were sincerely, though blindly, convinced
that they were standing up for a good that is universal, for what
is most important and precious to humanity--the one true religion,
of which godless renegades, possessed by the spirit of evil, wanted
to rob mankind. In this national struggle against Protestantism the
Spanish defended a certain universal principle, namely, the principle
of the external guardianship of a divine institution over humanity. It
was a false and untenable universalism, but its champions sincerely
believed in it and served it disinterestedly without any selfish
considerations, whether nationally-political or personal. At the same
time the Spanish genius of Ignatius Loyola founded, with the purpose
of combating Protestantism by peaceful means, the order of Jesuits--an
order of which people may think what they like, but to which one thing
can certainly not be denied--viz. its universal and international
character. So that in making the struggle with Protestantism into a
national idea the Spanish did not separate it from the interests of the
common good, as they understood it. The unsuccessful external struggle
for Roman Catholicism undermined the kingdom of Spain, but did not
exhaust the spiritual forces of the Spanish nation. Moral energy shown
in the defence of a universal though a wrongly conceived cause found
another and a better expression in the realm of the spirit. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Spain made considerable national
contributions to the general treasury of higher culture in the domain
of art, poetry, and contemplative mysticism. In all these things the
Spanish genius was occupied with objects important not for the Spanish
nation only but for all mankind. Its work was extremely national in
character, but this came about naturally, without any deliberate
intention on the part of the authors. It undoubtedly had a universal
interest, and supported the glory of Spain at a time when her external
power was on the wane and her arms were justly suffering defeat. The
influence of Spanish culture rivalled that of the Italian in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, precisely at a time when half
Europe entertained a natural hostility towards the defenders of the old
religion.
The highest development of the _English_ national spirit may, for the
sake of brevity, be designated by five names: Bacon, Shakespeare,
Milton, Newton, and Penn. These five names have nothing to do with the
demands and pretensions of exclusive nationalism. They stand for what
is of importance and value to all mankind, and express the common debt
of humanity to England. The men who created the national greatness
of England never thought of nationalism as such. One was concerned
with the true knowledge of nature and of man, and was occupied with
the problem of a new and better scientific method; another sought
artistically to represent the human soul, human passions, characters
and destinies, and did not hesitate to borrow his subjects from
foreign literature and transfer the place of action to foreign
countries. The great leaders of the Puritan movement, who found their
prophet in Milton, thought above all things of ordering life in
accordance with the Biblical ideal, equally binding, in their view,
upon all nations. These Englishmen did not hesitate to recognise for
_their own_ and to carry beyond the ocean an ideal _Hebrew_ in its
first origin and _German_ in its Protestant form. And the greatest
representative of modern science discovered with his English intellect
a universal truth about the physical world as an interconnected whole,
containing, as a principle of its unity, that which he called the
‘sensorium of the Deity.’
A broadly conceived world of scientific experience, open on all sides
to the intellect; profound artistic humanism; high ideas of religious
and political freedom and a grand conception of the physical unity of
the universe--this is what the English nation produced through her
heroes and men of genius. ‘England for the English’ was not enough for
them; they thought that the whole world was for the English, and they
had a right to think so, because they themselves were for the whole
world. The wide diffusion of the English race was in close correlation
with the good qualities of the national character. British merchants,
of course, always observed their own interests; but it is not _any_
merchants who could succeed in colonising North America and forming a
new great nation of it. For the United States were built up, not by
the Redskins or Negroes, but by English people and English political
and religious ideas--ideas of universal significance. Nor is it _any_
merchants who could take firm possession of India and build a civilised
Australia on a perfectly virginal soil.[138]
The culminating point in the national history of _France_ is the epoch
of the great Revolution and of the Napoleonic wars, when the universal
significance of that country was most clearly apparent. The national
life was then at its highest, not perhaps from the point of view of
its content, but of its intensity and of the breadth of external
influence. No doubt, the rights of man and of citizen proclaimed to all
the world proved to be largely fictitious; no doubt the all-embracing
revolutionary trinity--_liberté_, _egalité_, _fraternité_--was realised
in a very peculiar fashion. But in any case the fact that the people
were carried away by these universal ideas showed that the spirit of
narrow nationalism was foreign to them. Did France want to be ‘for
the French’ only when she surrendered herself to a half-Italian in
order that he should direct her powers and sweep away in the whole of
Europe the old order of things, introducing everywhere the principles
of civic equality, religious and political freedom? Apart from this
epoch, indeed, France was always noted for a special kind of universal
receptivity and communicativeness, by a power and a desire to grasp the
ideas of others, give them a finished and popular form, and then to
send them forth into the world. This power makes the history of France
a vivid and emphatic _résumé_ of universal history, and is too obvious
and too well known to dwell upon.
Having first shown the greatness of her national spirit in the
Reformation, _Germany_ has in modern times (from the middle of the
eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century) occupied the
foremost place in the domain of higher culture, intellectual and
æsthetic--the place which Italy had held at the end of mediæval
and at the beginning of modern history. The universal character
and significance of the Reformation, of the poetry of Goethe, of
the philosophy of Kant or Hegel, stands in no need of proof or
demonstration. I will only observe that for Germany, as for Italy, the
period of the highest development of the spiritual forces of the nation
coincided with the period of political weakness and disruption.
The broad idealism of the _Polish_ spirit, receptive of foreign
influences to the point of enthusiasm and devotion, is only too
obvious. The universalism of the Poles caused the narrow nationalists
to reproach them of ‘treason to the cause of the Slavs.’ But those who
are familiar with the shining lights of Polish thought--Mickiewicz,
Krasinski, Tovianski, Slowacki--know how greatly the power of the
national genius showed itself in their universalistic work. As to our
own country, the Russian spirit has hitherto found no embodiment more
vivid and powerful than the Tsar, whose powerful arm has demolished our
national exclusiveness for ever, and the poet who had a special gift
to identify himself with the genius of other nations and yet remain
wholly Russian.[139] Peter the Great and Pushkin--these two names are
sufficient to prove that the dignity of our national spirit found its
realisation only in unreserved communion with the rest of humanity, and
not apart from it.
Without enumerating all the other nations, I will only mention Holland
and Sweden. The national glory and prosperity of the first were due to
her struggle for the faith against Spanish despotism. As a consequence
of it, the little country did not shut itself up in its dearly bought
independence, but became the abode of free thought for all Europe.
Sweden manifested her national greatness when, under Gustavus Adolphus,
she devoted herself to the service of the common cause of religious
freedom against the policy of compulsory uniformity.
V
The history of all nations which have had a direct influence upon the
destinies of humanity in ancient and modern times teaches one and
the same thing. At the period when their powers were unfolded to the
utmost, they took the greatness and the value of their nationality to
lie not in itself taken in the abstract, but in something universal,
_supernational_ that they believed in, that they served and that they
realised in their creative work--a work national in its origin and
means of expression, but wholly universal in its content and in its
objective result. Nations live and act not for their own sakes, nor
for the sake of their material interests, but of their idea, _i.e._
for the sake of what is most important to them and _can be of service
to the world as a whole_--they live not for themselves only, but for
all. That which a nation believes in and does in faith it is bound to
regard as _unconditionally_ good--not as its own good, but as good in
itself and therefore as good for all; and such it generally proves
to be. Historical representatives of a nation may wrongly understand
this or that aspect of a nationally-universal idea which they serve,
and then their service is bad and fruitless. Philip II. and the Duke
of Alba had a very wrong idea of ecclesiastical unity, and the Paris
Convention understood the idea of human rights no better. But the bad
understanding passes away and the idea remains, and, if it is really
rooted in the soul of a people, it finds new and better expression free
from the old imperfections.
The creative work of a nation, _i.e._ that which a nation concretely
realises in the world, is universal; the object of true national
_self-consciousness_ is universal also. A nation is not aware of itself
in the abstract, as of an empty subject separate from the content and
the meaning of its life. It is conscious of itself in relation to that
which it does and wants to do, in relation to what it believes in and
what it serves.
It is clear from history that a nation does not regard itself, taken
in the abstract, as the purpose of its life. In other words, it does
not set an absolute value upon its material interest apart from its
supreme ideal condition. But if this be so, the individual too has no
right in his love for his nation to separate it from the meaning of its
existence and to put the service of its material advantages above the
demands of morality. A nation in and through its true creative work and
self-consciousness affirms itself in the universal--in that which is of
value for every one and in which all are united. How then can a true
patriot, for the sake of a supposed ‘advantage’ to his nation, destroy
its solidarity with other nations, and despise or hate foreigners? A
nation finds its true good in the common good; how then can a patriot
take the good of his nation to be something distinct from and opposed
to everything else? It will clearly not be the ideal moral good which
the nation itself desires, and the supposed patriot will prove to be
opposed not to other nations but to his own in its best aspirations.
National hostility and opposition no doubt exist, just as cannibalism
once existed everywhere; they exist as a zoological fact, condemned
by the best consciousness of the peoples themselves. Made into an
abstract principle this zoological fact hangs over the life of nations,
obscuring its significance and destroying its inspiration--for _the
significance and the inspiration of the particular is only to be found
in its connection and harmony with the universal_.
As against false patriotism or nationalism, which supports the
predominance of the animal instincts of a people over its higher
national self-consciousness, cosmopolitanism is right in demanding that
the moral law shall be unconditionally applied to all, apart from all
difference of nationality. But it is the moral principle itself which,
when consistently worked out, prevents us from being satisfied with the
negative demand of cosmopolitanism.
Let it be granted that the immediate object of the moral relation
is the individual person. But one of the essential peculiarities of
that person--direct continuation and expansion of his individual
character--is his nationality (in the positive sense of character,
type, and creative power). This is not merely a physical, but also
a psychical and moral fact. At the stage of development now reached
by humanity the fact of belonging to a given nationality is to a
certain extent confirmed by the individual’s self-conscious will.
Thus nationality is an inner, inseparable property of the person--is
something very dear and close to him. It is impossible to stand in a
moral relation to this person without recognising the existence of
what is so important to him. The moral principle does not allow us to
transform a concrete person, a living man with his inseparable and
essential national characteristics into an empty abstract subject with
all his determining peculiarities left out. If we are to recognise the
inner dignity of this particular man this obligation extends to all
positive characteristics with which he connects his dignity; if we love
a man we must love his nation which he loves and from which he does
not separate himself. The highest moral ideal demands that we should
love all men as we love ourselves. But since men do not exist outside
of nations (just as nations do not exist apart from individual men),
and since this connection has already become moral and inward as well
as physical, the direct logical deduction is that _we must love all
nations as we love our own_. This commandment affirms patriotism as a
natural and fundamental feeling, as a direct duty of the individual to
the collective whole immediately above him, and at the same time it
frees that feeling from the zoological properties of national egoism or
nationalism, and makes it the basis of and the standard for a positive
relation to all other nations in accordance with the absolute and
all-embracing principle of morality. The significance of this demand of
loving other nations does not in any way depend upon the metaphysical
question as to whether nations are independent collective entities.
Even if a nation exists only in its visible individual representatives,
at any rate _in them_ it constitutes a positive peculiarity which one
may value and love in foreigners just as much as in men belonging to
our own people. If such a relation actually becomes a rule, national
_differences_ will be preserved and even intensified, while hostile
_divisions_ and aggressiveness, that are so fundamental an obstacle to
the moral organisation of humanity, will disappear.
The demand to love other nations as our own does not at all imply a
_psychological identity_ of feeling, but only an _ethical identity_
of conduct. I must desire the true good of all other nations as much
as that of my own. This ‘love of benevolence’ is identical if only
because the true good is one and indivisible. Such ethical love
involves, of course, a psychological understanding and approval of
the positive characteristics of other nations. Once the senseless and
ignorant national hostility has been overcome by the moral will, we
begin to know and to value other nations--we begin _to like_ them.
This ‘approving love,’ however, can never be identical with the
love we feel for our own people, just as the sincerest love to our
neighbours (according to the commandment of the Gospel) can never be
psychologically identical with the love for oneself, although it is
ethically equivalent to it. One’s own _self_, just as _one’s own_
nation, always retains the priority of a starting-point. When this
difficulty is cleared away, no serious objections can be raised against
the principle: _love all other nations as your own_.[140]
FOOTNOTES:
[120]
Si fractus illabatur orbis
Impavidum ferient ruinae.
[121] For confirmation of these statements see last chapter of Part
I. of _Natsionalny Vopros_ (_The national question_), by the present
author.
[122] Although the Stoic philosophy originated in Greece, independently
of Rome, it developed only in the Roman era, was particularly prevalent
among the Romans, and manifested its practical influence chiefly
through Roman lawyers.
[123]
Two souls live in my breast,
They struggle, and long to be parted.
GOETHE.
[124] That the best among the Pharisees took no part in the persecution
of Jesus Christ, and were favourable to primitive Christianity, is
shown in Professor Hvolson’s excellent article in the _Memuari Akademii
Nauk_ (_Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences_), 1893.
[125] Οἰκουμένη (_i.e._ γῆ), the Greek name for the Roman Empire.
[126] In speaking of the opposition between Judaism and paganism, I am
referring, of course, not to the teaching of Moses and the prophets
and sages--they all recognised in principle that the pagans had human
rights--but to the spirit of the crowd and its leaders.
[127] St. Paul’s expression.
[128] This is brought out by the fact that the only rational way of
accounting for the genesis of a stable national character, such as the
Jewish--which is not affected by the external influences of climate,
history, etc., is to suppose that it is the inherited, personal
character of the national ancestor. The inner truth of the Biblical
characteristic of Jacob--the ancestor of the Jews--and also of Ishmail,
the ancestor of the Northern Arabs, will be recognised by any impartial
reader, whatever his attitude to the historical side of the narrative
may be. Even granting that the man named Jacob, who did all that in
the book of Genesis he is said to have done, never existed at all,
anyway the Jews, or at any rate the chief tribe of Judah, must have had
a common progenitor; and starting with the national character of the
Jews we must conclude that that progenitor had precisely the typical
peculiarities which the Bible ascribes to Jacob. See S. M. Solovyov’s
_Nabludeniya nad istoricheskoiu zhiznyu narodov_ (_Observations on
the historical life of nations_), and also my _Filosofia Bibleiskoi
Istorii_ (_The Philosophy of the Biblical History_) in the _Istoria
Teokratii_ (_History of Theocracy_).
[129] St. John iv. 22.
[130] St. Matthew x. 6.
[131] St. Matthew xxviii. 19.
[132] The words in the Acts of the Apostles (i. 8), “Ye shall be
witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria,
and unto the uttermost part of the earth,” show still more clearly that
the Saviour of the world recognised a definite, local and national
starting-point for His world-wide work.
[133] Romans ix. 1-5, x. 1.
[134] At one time the Moorish culture in Spain was not inferior, and in
some respects it was superior to the Christian culture of the period.
But history clearly proves how short-lived all Mohammedan culture is.
The end with which it met in the Middle Ages in Damascus, Bagdad and
Cairo would no doubt have been repeated once more in the West. There
too it would have been replaced by stable barbarism, such as the
Turkish. And if the Bashi-Bazouks were to overrun London, and Saxony
were to be constantly raided by the Kurds, what would become of the
British Museum and the Leipzig Press? This is an argument _ad homines_.
But speaking quite seriously and wholly admitting the comparative
merits of Mohammedanism and the historical tasks it still has to
accomplish in Asia and Africa, it must be remembered that this religion
professedly renounces the absolute moral ideal, _i.e._ the principle
of the perfect manifestation of God in man, and has no right therefore
to dominate Christian peoples. To repulse the Mohammedan invasion of
Europe was therefore both a historical necessity and a historical merit
for the Christian nations which took a leading part in the struggle.
[135] Chiefly, but not exclusively, for Spain too had some truly
spiritual champions of Christianity. Such, _e.g._, was Raymond Lullius,
who devoted his life to spreading the true religion by means of
rational persuasion. He worked out a special method, which he thought
could render the dogmas of the faith as self-evident as the truths of
pure mathematics and formal logic. Later on he became a missionary, and
was assassinated in the Bastarian Colonies for peaceful preaching of
the Gospel.
[136] It is a curious coincidence that in both the East and the West
the first persecution for religious beliefs--namely, the persecution
of the Manichean heresy in the fourth century--was due to a
_Spaniard_--Theodosius the Great. It is curious too that the heresy of
the Albigenses, against which the Dominican inquisition was originally
intended, was a direct development of Manicheism, on account of which
the Emperor Theodosius had appointed his ‘inquisitors’ ten centuries
before. Shortly before that time the deplorable part which the
Spanish nation was to play with regard to religious persecutions was
foreshadowed by the fact that the first execution for religious belief
(viz. that of the Priscillian heretics) was due to the instigation of
two Spanish bishops. This unheard-of action called forth protests both
in Italy (St. Ambrose of Milan) and in France (St. Martin of Tours).
[137] For an impartial statement of the facts see A. Réville’s book on
the religion of Mexico and Peru.
[138] Hindus taught in English schools begin to complain--in the
English and their own newspapers, after the English style--that the
English yoke is burdensome and to say that their nation must be united
and obtain freedom for itself. Why is it that this had never occurred
to them before? The fact is that they obtained ideas, such as that of
nationality, national spirit, national dignity, patriotism, solidarity,
development, exclusively from the English. Left to themselves they had
not been able to arrive at them during the two and a half thousand
years of their history, in spite of their ancient wisdom.
[139] The well-known remark of Dostoevsky, who at his best was himself
equally all-embracing.
[140] I cannot regard as serious the objection made by one of my
critics that it is impossible to love one’s own and other nations
equally, because in war it is necessary to fight for one’s own people
against the others. I would have thought it obvious that _the moral
norm_ of international relations must be deduced from some other fact
than that of war. Otherwise we might be driven to take as the norm for
personal relations such facts as, _e.g._, a furious fight between an
actor and a Government clerk, which recently engaged the attention of
the newspapers.