CHAPTER VII.

Patriotism. The Patriotism of the Ancients; of the Moderns.-Some have rejected Patriotism.- National Conceitedness, Pride.-Narrowness of Feeling a Counterfeit of Patriotism.-What is true Patriotism?-It is noble and necessary for Liberty-Loyalty.-Public Spirit.-What it consists in.Calamitous Consequences of a want of Public Spirit.-Veneration of the Old; Forefathers.- How far just, necessary.—When injurious.-The Age of Action under Forty; of Conservatism over Forty.-Do Times grow worse? -When are we more experienced than our Forefathers?-Stagnation and Heedlessness.

LXV. WE have seen, towards the end of the first volume, that with the ancients the individual, as to right, was almost absorbed by the state; all they were felt to be, they were in and through the state; and their state was not only a political institution, but a separate religion, with peculiar national deities and distinct national dogmas, was closely interwoven with it. The national religion thus aided in separating the specific state or nation from others--a circumstance powerfully promoted by another fact. The Greeks, and after them the Romans, were so far advanced in civilisation beyond the other tribes known to them, that they looked down upon them as benighted beings of an inferior kind; the stranger was a barbarian. In the attachment, therefore, which an ancient felt for his state, in his love of country, his patriotism, were united and amalgamated nearly all the intensest affections, which animate the human breast -religion, with all the powerful associations of poetry,

legends, and mythologic history; the affection for his kindred tribe and native land, its institutions and history, its language and literature; and consciousness of superiority, disdain of foreigners, and hatred when they became invaders and threatened to smother this superior civilisation. When the Persian attacked the Greek, his life and property was not only endangered, his whole existence as an individual, which we believe will last beyond this earthly existence, his very goods were endangered. Patriotism, therefore, comprehended the acme of all virtuous feelings, of piety, of love of civilisation; it was the meridian of man's most noble existence. Christianity severed religion from the soil, from man as a citizen. He was told that religion is above, beyond the difference of language, color, kindred, descent or country. Chivalry arose and became a tie beyond national affection; the church with its monasteries became a super-national society, which with its common language, the Latin, the monastic orders extending over many political limits, and under one common discipline, the seminaries, mingling the youths of various nations, the pilgrimages to distant lands, (1) and the frequent emigrations of priests, produced a common feeling, despite of the many feuds between parts and particles in this European society. Vast enthusiastic movements, such as the crusades, aided still more, if not in cementing nations, for the feudal systems prevented this, in extinguishing that form of patriotism which it had naturally assumed with the ancients. In course of time, however, three great historical processes took place in the European race-first, that which I should like to call the nationalization of tribes and governments; France became gradually one France, Spain, one Spain; then the

growth of national languages, poetry and literature, in opposition to the Latin, by the rise of nations and great minds among them. Dante, who dared to sing in "vulgar Italian," and pressed at once the seal of his genius upon the idiom of the unlettered, felt still obliged to ask pardon that he did not continue to compose in Latin, as he had begun, on so sacred a subject as his was. Finally the reformation. This event or process of civilisation, broke in many countries the uniting tie of the church. But a new common bond had arisen, and was rapidly increasing in strength, a general pursuit of knowledge, the tie of common European science, promoting in its turn intercommunication, both mental and, by the gradual fusion of the sciences and arts, also the physical intercommunion still more increased by the greater security which was an effect of the gradual nationalization of states and governments. Sciences naturally lead to general views; they have, in the main, a strongly cosmopolitic character; and, above all, we have seen that natural law, that science which treats of the rights of men, flowing from their nature, of justice, and not merely of positive or historical law, arose, and was and is cultivated with the moderns, while the christian religion must ever continue to exercise a more and more cosmopolitic character, the more purely it dwells among men. There was thus no possibility of a return of patriotism in its ancient manifestation.

(1) Among others, Frederic Rühs, in his Manual of the History of the Middle Ages, Berlin, 1816, mentions the pilgrims as one of the means, by which mutual knowledge of one another among the nations of Europe was kept up, a slender means, yet in the absence of other and powerful ones in the darkest periods, not undeserving of attention. I quote from memory, but believe I am

correct as to the above author. Whether or no, I consider it a fact that the innumerable pilgrimages, attended with many evil consequences, had also the mentioned good effect, of aiding to keep alive the sympathy among the Western Christian nations.

LXVI. It was felt and seen that ancient patriotism, heightened to national or state egotism, could no longer exist or be endured. "The barriers are broken, which severed states and nations in hostile egotism. One cosmopolitic bond unites at present all thinking minds and all the light of this century may now freely fall upon a new Galileo or Erasmus." (1) On the other hand it was observed how churlish, narrow, unjust or wicked that frequently is, which is claimed as patriotism, how directly opposed to truth, how narrow and blind in its selfishness.

I do not speak here of clanishness, which in its height and extreme perhaps in the Scotchman, and which by the great painter of his country's customs, has been represented, no doubt in strong, yet true colors, as rising at times beyond every thing, even the fear of final eternal doom; (2) nor of the petty and selfish feeling, the utmost extent of which is the town-limit,—a despicable interestedness; but I speak of that national egotism which is blind to truth and callous to justice beyond the nation's frontier, and which has been used for various and opposite evil ends, so much so, that men have not been wanting, who not only looked upon patriotism as beneath a true elevation of mind, but have actually declaimed against it. A late writer exclaims, "What misery has not already been caused by the love of country! How much has not this counterfeit virtue excelled all acknowledged vices in wild fury! Is selfishness of a country less a vice than that of an indivi26

VOL. II.

dual? Does justice cease to be a virtue, so soon as we exercise it toward a foreign nation? It is a fine species of honor indeed, which prohibits us from declaring ourselves against our country, when justice no longer stands by its side!" (3) If patriotism is founded upon selfishness, and therefore cannot but lead to injustice, if it tends to blind us against truth, then, indeed it is one of our first and most sacred duties to pluck this rank weed out of our heart. Justice is above all; truth is the only legitimate sphere of the human mind and soul.

(1) Schiller, Inaugural address on: What is, and for what Purpose do we study, Universal History? first delivered in 1789. It is contained in his works.

(2) Walter Scott depicts this fearful feeling of attachment to the chief of the clan, family, &c., in Elspeth in the Antiquary, especially in the 12th chap. vol. ii, in colors which every foreigner would certainly consider beyond all possibility, did he not know that Scott never, probably, gave a wrong account of manners, national feelings, &c., except from want of knowledge, which in the above character cannot well have been the case.

(3) Louis Börne, a late German writer of much keenness and boldness, who was obliged to leave Germany, and take his abode at Paris, where he wrote many a bitter, many a witty, many a true and many a false thing. He belonged to a party, if such it can be called, in Germany, who wish to unite their endeavors with that which gives itself the singular name of la jeune France, thus raising, probably for the first time, age into a political party distinction. These parties seem to think that liberty has yet to be born, and that this new god will be brought forth by the union of the two great nations, to whom all this procreation of new liberty seems to have been assigned, the French and the Germans. The Anglican tree of liberty, which is an oak of centuries, is thus treated as if its mighty branches did not reach already over many countries, and over France and Germany too. But I must stop, lest I should make of a note an historical discussion. As to the above passage, to which this note is appended, I have for the present to say only that the author is mistaken as to the degree of