National consciousness

“ And with the absence of this true æsthetic instinct, we find not unnaturally the absence of any national consciousness that the sense of what is beautiful, and the manifestation of that sense through the language of art, adorn and exalt a people in the face of the world and before the tribunal of history; a national consciousness which should become a national conscience—a sense, that is, of public duty and of a collective responsibility in regard to this loveliest flower of civilisation. ”

“ When, then, we attribute to the idea of the nation or to the national consciousness this all-important creative, constitutive, and conservative function, we must be clear that the idea is not an intellectual conception merely, but implies an enduring emotional conative attitude which is the sentiment of devotion to the nation; and, further, we must remember that the nation means not simply all existing individuals, the mere momentary embodiment of the nation, but something that is far greater, because it includes all the potentialities embodied in the existing persons and organisation. ”

“ A little over 100 years old, the nation-state was the most tangible product of the political practical experience in the pragmatic context whose underlying structure is so well reflected in literacy. Together with the nation-state, the modern notion of nationality was defined and became a major force of political life. As part of the political consciousness in the age of industrial production, national consciousness played a very precise role, ultimately expressed in all forms of nationalism. ”

“ But national self-consciousness is not developed by conflict and rivalry only. It is refined and enriched by all other forms of intercourse. In studying other peoples, their organisation and their history, we become more clearly aware of the defects and the qualities and potentialities of our own nation. And in this way, refinement of national consciousness is now going on rapidly in the European peoples. ”

“ Each of the great nations is beginning to understand itself, and to take thought for the morrow in the light of this self-knowledge; and this increase of national self-knowledge, this enrichment of national self-consciousness, is the great new factor which alone can secure the further progress of mankind. ”

“ It is this increasing contact and intercourse of peoples, brought about by the increased facilities of communication, which has quickened the growth of national self-consciousness throughout all the world and has made the principle of nationality or, more properly, the desire for nationhood and for national existence and development, for self-assertion and for international recognition, the all-important feature of modern times, overshadowing every other phenomenon that historians have to notice, or statesmen to reckon with. ”

“ When ideals which really lie at the root of our being are first proclaimed, all that is external in life protests. So were many great reformers martyred, but they left their ideals behind them in the air, and men breathed them and they became part of their very being. Nationality is a state of consciousness, a mood of definite character in our intellectual being, and it is not perceived first except in profound meditation ”

“ Nationalism as an historical phenomenon of a people with a common language and culture and with the consciousness of a common destiny was raised to a mythical, meta-historical plane. The essence of national unity was discovered to reside in race and soil; the cultural and spiritual creations of the nation were attributed to man's biological resources. ”

“ If in their inception national ideals are spiritual, their final object must also be spiritual, perhaps to make man a yet freer agent, but acting out of a continual consciousness of his unity with humanity. The discipline which the highly organized State imposes on its subjects connects them continuously in thought to something greater than themselves, and so ennobles the average man. The freedom which the policy of other nations permits quickens intelligence and will. Each policy has its own defects ”

“ National actions were in the main impulsive and instinctive actions, like those of young children or the higher animals. And for this reason—that nations had too little true self-knowledge, and had not developed a true and rich ideal of national life—the self-consciousness of nations was too poor in content to serve as the guide of actions making for progress. ”

“ But in the future our national self-consciousness will be enriched and fitted for the guidance of the national will in a still more effective manner than by the knowledge of our weaknesses being forced upon us by the nations who are our rivals in the world. In many directions—by the historians, the biologists, the anthropologists, the statisticians—data are being gathered for a science of society whose sure indications will enable us deliberately to guide the further evolution of the nation towards the highest ideal of a nation that we can conceive. ”

“ Since a nation derives its ideas and instincts of [Pg 244] government, as much as its temperament and its language, from God, acting through the influences of nature and of history, these ideas and instincts are originally and essentially peculiar to it, and not separable from it; they have no practical value in themselves when divided from the capacity which corresponds to them. National qualities are the incarnations of political ideas. ”

“ For then, in course of time, came the movement historians call nationalism, a movement which subordinated church to state, the faithful to the patriotic, a movement which made of God at most a national hero. ”

“ The technique for a nation getting the attention of other nations turns on a nation's getting its own attention, upon the nation's becoming self-conscious, upon its having a conception, upon its having a vision of action developing within itself from which a body implacably comes forth. ”

“ This supreme National sentiment overpowering all considerations of local interest and attachment, is the assurance that our country will live forever, that all difficulties, however menacing, will yield to the challenge of popular intelligence and patriotism, and that the glorious record of the past is but the morning ray of our National greatness to come. ”

“ We must rely on the ideas common among our people, and on their power to discern among their countrymen the aristocracy of character and intellect.
Civilizations are externalizations of the soul and character of races. They are majestic or mean according to the treasure of beauty, imagination, will, and thought laid up in the soul of the people. That great mid-European State, which while I write is at bay surrounded by enemies, did not arrive at that pitch of power which made it dominant in Europe simply by militarism. ”

“ The other nations want to know—if they are going to let us have our way with them—put over what we like to call our superior democratic open way upon them, that we have a vision—a vision of human nature and of modern life which is better, clearer, more practical and timely than their vision.
The other nations want to know,—if we are to have our way, that we not only have a vision of what our way is—a national vision, but a technique for expressing and embodying that national vision. ”

“ The hidden forces of national life are instinctive and unconscious. One cannot differentiate natural influences so as to ascribe to each its value. The ideals of nations, like those of individuals, are derived from all the concrete qualities of character. ”

“ Lastly comes the psychologist M’Dougall who says, “a nation is a people or population enjoying some degree of political independence and possessed of a national mind and character and therefore capable of national deliberation and volition.” ”

“ The problem of nationalities and cultures. What new schemes of attitudes and values, or what substitute for the isolated national state as an instrument of cultural expansion, will stop the fight of nationalities and cultures? ”

“ The essential truth of nationality lies in this, that it is necessary for each nation to develop itself, express itself and realise itself, so that Humanity itself may develop itself, express itself and realise itself. ”

“ The tribal feeling out of which the State develops is natural, and the fear by which the State is strengthened is reasonable under present circumstances. And in addition to these two, there is a third source of strength in a national State, namely patriotism in its religious aspect. ”

“ Though in speculative minds it may arise from a contemplation of the nature and tendency of such institutions, fortified by the events that have happened in other ages and countries, yet as a National sentiment, it must be traced to those habits of thinking, which we derive from the nation from whom the inhabitants of these States have in general sprung. ”

“ Looking towards a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West; which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race, so that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. ”

“ What is the ideal which we must set before us? The first and foremost is the ideal of nationalism. Now what is Nationalism? It is, I conceive, a process through which a nation expresses itself and finds itself, not in isolation from other nations but, as part of a great scheme by which, in seeking its own expression and therefore its own identity, it materially assists the self-expression and self-realization of other nations as well. Diversity is as real as Unity. ”

“ Perhaps even, recovering from our present artificially induced and radically insincere mood of national self-abasement, we shall learn to take some pride in our own characteristic contributions as a nation to the arts of government, to the thought, the literature, the art, the mechanical inventions which have made and are re-making modern civilization. ”

“ But this is not enough: if we must persist in holding to our nationality, we must look into ourselves, we must search out and probe our national failings and our national weaknesses, and find out in what essential characteristics we are wanting as a nation, and so build up national character. ”

“ Would it be reasonable to throw so great a burden on the individuals distinguished by their philanthropy and patriotism?
The object to be obtained, as an object of humanity, appeals alike to all; as a national object, it claims the interposition of the nation. It is the nation which is to reap the benefit. ”

“ If to readers in other countries the thought appears primitive or elementary, I would like them to remember that we are at the beginning of our activity as a nation, and we have yet to settle fundamentals. Races hoary with political wisdom may look with disdain on the attempts at political thinking by a new self-governing nationality, or the theories of civilization discussed about the cradle of an infant State. To childhood may be forgiven the elemental character of its thought and its idealistic imaginations. They may not persist in developed manhood ”

“ The individual consciousness is complete only by including the attachments, in narrower and broader relations, to precisely the elements that enter into patriotism—to place, to the fundamental ways and appreciations of the social surroundings, to persons, to authority, to traditions. The composite effects of these attachments may be greater or smaller, as determined by a totality of conditions, but the foundations of patriotism, whatever its object, are deep in consciousness. ”

“ It means that we must go back of the identities of language and obedience to common laws, and take as our educational [221] foundations that which American life is in truth based upon: physical power and motor freedom, the sense of liberty, the colonial spirit of comradeship and devotion to common cause, the ideal of an abundant and enthusiastic life. Merely becoming conscious of these and observing their meaning and their place in our national life is in itself a large contribution to the sources out of which patriotism may be drawn. ”

“ When further, the concept of nation and nationality is used in conjunction with the equally vague concepts of state, church, and humanity, an absolute chaos of disconnected thoughts is apt to be presented. ”

“ The nation is a natural "biological group," whose members have an "instinctive liking" for each other and "act with a common purpose." The instinctive liking is created by common customs and a shared experience. This experience, expressed in song and legislative enactment and legend, becomes known as the national tradition, and is passed on from generation to generation in household heroes, such as Lincoln, and famous phrases such as "Government of the people." ”

“ That literature discloses the character of the national being, still to be manifested in a civilization, and it must flame out before the tale which began among the gods is closed. Whatever brings this communal character into our social order, and at the same time desires the independent aristocratic intellect, is in accord with the national tradition. ”

“ Take our own or any other country as an instance; where millions of brains, many of them by no means first-rate in power, go to form a national character, the highest (as each nation is apt to think of itself) in the world. ”

“ They have felt those great impulses of life which really constitute the consciousness of the nation. When you get into the consciousness of a nation, and see the favorite pursuits of a nation, you begin to understand its politics ”

“ We have to discover for ourselves the ideas which lie at the root of national character, and so inculcate these principles that they will pervade the nation and make it a spiritual solidarity, and unite the best minds in their service, and so control those passionate and turbulent elements which are the cause of the downfall and wreckage of nations by internal dissensions. ”