Cosmopolitanism

“ Cosmopolitanism, the conception of humanity, the ideal of a “Society of Friends”—the Epicurean league—from which women were not excluded, and the precept of “not expecting from life more than it has to give,” take the place of the highly individualised commonwealth, with its strenuous masculine life of war and politics, and its passionate temper which felt that nothing had been accomplished so long as anything remained undone. ”

“ True nationalism is not opposed to internationalism, but we abhor those nationalist jingoes who in the name of nationalism oppress other nations, and we reject that form of internationalism and cosmopolitanism, which in fact recognizes only one—its own nation—and oppresses the others. ”

“ It is discouraging that our American social movement has been captured by cosmopolitanism. For the immediate future lies with radical changes in the world of environment. [140] Living conditions are going to be improved. A greater measure of equality will be achieved in our own time. But how is the social change inside the country to be related to other States? What shall be our foreign policy? This is where the cosmopolitanism of our radical group is a poor guide for action. It is the vice of liberals that they don't harness their ideas to facts. ”

“ There is a certain sort of cosmopolitanism without which no nation's life can be complete—nay, without which it cannot go on at all.
It is the cosmopolitanism of recognizing greatness outside our own borders. The cosmopolitanism of owning that there are as good fish in foreign seas as ever there were in the English Channel. The cosmopolitanism of a human brotherhood, whether it hails from the Sandwich Islands, from France, from Finland, or from Hungary ”

“ And, finally, it is for us to take account also of the growth of what must be called "cosmopolitanism," that breaking down of the hostile barriers keeping one people apart from the others, ignorant of them, and often contemptuous.
Here, then, are four legacies from the nineteenth century to the twentieth:—first, the scientific spirit; second, the spread of democracy; third, the assertion of nationality; and, fourth, that stepping across the confines of language and race, for which we have no more accurate name than "cosmopolitanism." ”

“ While cosmopolitanism is the dominant will that the purpose of the existence of humanity be actually realized in humanity, patriotism is the will that this end be first realized in the particular nation to which we ourselves belong, and that this achievement thence spread over the entire race. ”

“ PROFESSOR MUENSTERBERG once defined the three stages of a nation's development as provincial, cosmopolitan, and national, and placed America—if we remember rightly—in a phase of transition between cosmopolitanism and nationalism. ”

“ I grant the theory; but I ask myself if I am really bound by it to love all these my fellow-citizens, whatever their conduct and character may be. Love is an elastic word; and, if I am to love the Germans, I must love them in some very different sense from that in which I love my country and my race. It really is, in another form, the old controversy between cosmopolitanism and patriotism. The "Enthusiasm of Humanity" is a noble sentiment; but the action of our fellow-members of the human family may be such as to render it, at least for the moment, impossible of realization. ”

“ International peace is never coming by an increase of similarities (this is the old-fashioned crowd-philosophy) ; international peace is coming by the frankest and fullest kind of recognition of our differences. Internationalism and cosmopolitanism must not be confused. The aim of cosmopolitanism is for all to be alike; the aim of internationalism is a rich content of widely varying characteristic and experience.
If it were true that we ought to increase the likenesses between nations, then it would be legitimate for each nation to try to impose its ideals upon others. ”

“ Yet during this same century, cosmopolitanism appeared as a characteristic trend in almost every nation, whether large or small. It was especially easy for the French to become cosmopolitans since their language and literature were universally known. ”

“ The "state" was substituted for humanity; cosmopolitanism gave way to nationalism. ”

“ Russia, unfortunately, has not always observed this principle.
It seems to me that in politics nothing is so dangerous as to be more carried away by cosmopolitanism than by patriotism, and to forget one's own feelings and duties in one's desire to please some other Power. Cosmopolitanism kills patriotism. I have spent many winters in England, and have known many Englishmen, but I have never met a true Briton who would boast of being a cosmopolitan and not a patriot. Happy England! ”

“ And in the light of this—for I think we may not unjustly attribute the host’s sentiments to the host’s author—he regarded the “political community as only an elementary stage”; nationality was at best preparatory for the “universal union” of men; while “the feeling of nationality is a onesidedness to be merged in a genuine and ardent cosmopolitanism.” Cosmopolitanism is the political correlative to a belief in culture. In the end there is a very general agreement among the visitors at Cordova Lodge. ”

“ And the American, by the same token, will be mistaken for an Oriental in the Orient, for a European in Europe, though not for any other but an American at home. For his national traditions, guided by a superior international purpose, will represent the wholesome and vital traditions of all the civilized people of the world. And a nation with a thick layer of traditions, is, as a rule, richer in customs and more refined in manners. Hence the cosmopolitanism of the American of the future. Hence too his culture, which will harmonize with, nay, re-inforce, the culture of every race. ”

“ Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history. ”

“ What is to be desired is not cosmopolitanism, not the absence of all national characteristics that one associates with couriers, wagon-lit attendants, and others, who have had everything distinctive obliterated by multiple and trivial contacts with men of every civilized country. ”

“ The internationalism for which we are striving does not negate nationalism. It is not a cosmopolitanism, a world-union of undifferentiated and denationalized individuals, but a policy of compounding and accommodating permanent and distinct national interests. ”

“ We find this idea of cosmopolitanism in the modern essayists, [132] who are read in America, like Lowes Dickinson, Bertrand Russell, and Bernard Shaw. This doctrine has misled our social workers, our socialists, our radicals in social reform, our feminists—almost every element in our social movement. Our American radicalism is permeated with a vague cosmopolitanism, and its child, pacifism. At no point has "modern" thought exercised a profounder effect than on our social movement. ”

“ Gradually, with the growth of national feeling and the more definite demarcation of nations and the ever-increasing{173} sense of patriotism, that higher form of selfishness, cosmopolitanism went out of fashion. ”

“ Cosmopolitanism is the attempt to deny the instinct of nationality. It works in three ways with us. It seeks to impose an English culture on our mixed races; it seeks to create an American type at one stroke ”

“ Such high-sounding and professedly disinterested cosmopolitanism appeals to a certain class of sentimental believers in democracy. It does not appeal, however, to any one who fully understands present-day industrial and political conditions. ”

“ The hope of a coming internationalism enjoins above all else the maintenance and natural growth of independent nationalities, for without such there could be no gradual evolution of internationalism, but only a series of unsuccessful attempts at a chaotic and unstable cosmopolitanism. ”

“ A similar expansion in municipal communities like Athens and Rome leads to political cosmopolitanism, to an ideal of human unity within a circle of common culture whose peace is secured by centralised force and whose character is intensely individual. ”

“ If it is true that the last fifteen years have witnessed a cooling towards Europeanism, this has been a matter of sentiment only, a return from cosmopolitanism to nationalism in matters of minor importance, and has affected nothing practical by so much as a hair's breadth. ”

“ At some time, after the first period of cosmopolitanism shall be ushered in as a tenth ethnic period, it will come to be recognized that there is a word fraught with fuller meanings even than the word patriotism. ”

“ That is what I complain of your cosmopolitanism. When [Pg 41] you say you want all peoples to unite, you really mean that you want all peoples to unite to learn the tricks of your people. If the Bedouin Arab does not know how to read, some English missionary or schoolmaster must be sent to teach him to read, but no one ever says, 'This schoolmaster does not know how to ride on a camel; let us pay a Bedouin to teach him.' You say your civilisation will include all talents. ”

“ Certain advocates of cosmopolitanism in their agitation against patriotism often take advantage of the importance [Pg 5] of home in the relation of a man to his country when they appeal to the "proletarians": "Do you own anything? Do you have even a home in this country? ”

“ The deeper interest in the expression of national qualities and in the representation of provincial peculiarities is to-day accompanied by an increasing cosmopolitanism which seems to be casting down the barriers of race and of language. ”

“ Nearly every group of peoples has developed its own mentality, its own psychology, ideas and ideals. We need to preserve the difference between those ideas and ideals. If you merge them, you get a common—a very common—humanity. All progress takes place in the reaction between extremes. All philosophy has arisen from a mixture of races which brought to one another different ideas and ideals.” [195] The condition of progress is the preservation of national characteristics. But, what is even more important, there are in cosmopolitanism grave moral dangers involved. ”

“ This change was effected by Christianity in Judaism, and must be effected in any merely national58 religion before it can be purged of evil.
In practice, patriotism has many other enemies to contend with. Cosmopolitanism cannot fail to grow as men acquire more knowledge of foreign countries by education and travel. ”

“ For what is Cosmopolis but the City of the World, and what can a Cosmopolitan be but a good citizen wherever he goes? That is what I want to be and not International—which seems to me an altogether homeless adjective. It means, I take it, “in between nations”—in between the substantial things of life. The only truly international thing is the ocean outside territorial waters. Trying to be International is like trying to walk about on the cracks between the boards, instead of walking on the floor ”

“ America, and especially Saxon America, with its immense virgin territories, with its republic, with its equilibrium between stability and progress, with its harmony between liberty and democracy, is the continent of the future—the immense continent stretched by God between the Atlantic and Pacific, where mankind may plant, essay, and resolve all social problems. Europe has to decide whether she will confound herself with Asia, placing upon her lands old altars, and upon the altars old idols, and upon the idols immovable theocracies, and upon the theocracies despotic empires ”

“ Is it presumption to say that if just to ourselves and all nations we shall be felt through this whole continent; that we shall spread our language, institutions, and civilization through a wider space than any nation has yet filled with a like beneficent influence? ”

“ Cosmopolitan finance is one example of such a tendency. Another, more morally sympathetic but not much less dangerous to nationalism in such a country as America, is cosmopolitan revolutionary idealism. ”

“ Despite these divisive forces, our need to function in terms of planetary oneness is so great that the term "citizens of the world" not only makes sense, but is accepted and even flaunted in the face of tough restrictions and hard nosed nationalism.
Segments of humanity that are ready and willing to sign up as world citizens already enjoy world consciousness, carrying world passports; and are experimenting with various aspects of worldist thinking, contact, organization. They are ready and willing to take part in a multitude of planetary experiments in world-wide human association. ”

“ The cosmopolitan spirit, whether for good or for evil, is hastily obliterating all distinctions. What is distinctly national in these countries is less valuable than the immense wealth of universal ideas ”

“ If this be right, [223] we are not to guard our civilization jealously, hedge it about with national jealousy and bigotry but rather send our culture abroad on a mission. We are to understand and to teach the culture of every other nation sympathetically, trusting to our own foundations to hold firm. We must be so fortified in our own virtue that we shall not be afraid to send our spirit abroad to compete with whatever it shall meet in the old world or the new. ”

“ The very existence of your great country, the principles upon which it is founded, its geographical position, its present scale of civilization, and all its moral and material interests, would lead on your people not only to maintain, but necessarily more and more to develop your foreign intercourse. Then, being in so many respects linked to mankind at large, you cannot have the will, nor yet the power, to remain indifferent to the outward world. And if you cannot remain indifferent, you must resolve to throw your weight into that balance in which the fate and condition of man is weighed. ”