National culture

“ The national customs, culture, and recreations which made the country a pleasant place to live in, have almost disappeared, and with them one of the strongest ties which bind people to the country of their birth. ”

“ In fact, every nation has its traditions, which illumine its history and enrich its life. From tradition springs the flower of culture. On it chiefly depends the cultivation of the character, the customs and manners, of a people. ”

“ A nation is gradually created by a variety of influences—the influence of original organisation, of climate, soil, religion, laws, customs, manners, extraordinary accidents and incidents in their history, and the individual character of their illustrious citizens. These influences create the nation—these form the national mind, and produce in the course of centuries a high degree of civilisation. ”

“ The cultivation of the fine arts greatly contributes to the respect, character, and dignity of every government by which they have been encouraged, and are intimately connected with every thing valuable in national influence. ”

“ They had abandoned that sort of task which they had engaged in at the outset, and which, difficult as it is, is permanently incumbent on the cultured classes of the country—to make the culture of the nation homogeneous and uniform by imparting and receiving, by living in and of and for the nation, contributing to its thought and life their best stores, whatever they are. ”

“ It was a culture which nurtured constitutional government, prized the rule of law and respect for the rights of all of society’s members, and held up to the eyes of all it reached a vision of a coming age of social justice. ”

“ The building up of a civilization is at once the noblest and the most practical of all enterprises, in which human faculties are exalted to their highest, and beauties and majesties are manifested in multitude as they are never by solitary man or by disunited peoples. In the highest civilizations the individual citizen is raised above himself and made part of a greater life, which we may call the National Being. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The methods and rules of their teaching, the inspiration of their inventors, the penetrating nature of their institutions, the reproductive influence of their example, the contagious activity of their doctrines, the active proselytism of their reforms, the irresistible fascination of their originality, the exuberant florescence of their Christianity, all exert a profound influence upon European culture and on the morals, the politics, and the destinies of the world, and guide, improve, and transform the American nations. ”

“ These are the reasons why we should not adopt promiscuously their taste, their opinions, their manners. Customs, habits, and language, as well as government should be national. America should have her own distinct from all the world. ”

“ 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? ”

“ I throw out this suggestion, which may hold the imagination of those who have noble conceptions of what national life should be and what a nation should work for, in the hope that some time it may fructify. ”

“ Moreover the tide of patriotic feeling, or the passion of nationality, which had for centuries been growing in strength, intelligence, and manliness, was then at its height, the people of all sorts being possessed with a hearty, honest English enthusiasm and national pride. ”

“ They would see a country with firm, sound, and moral institutions, whose upper classes are worthy of their rank, and, by possessing the highest degree of culture, devoting themselves to the service of the State, setting an example of patriotism, and knowing how to preserve the influence legitimately their own. ”

“ Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that each of the component elements making up the expanding civilization--each people, city, state, nation, empire--developed its own total culture pattern, subject to the pressures mutually exerted by neighboring communities. ”

“ These societies, therefore, exerted no little influence on the social, religious, and intellectual life of the country, and became a powerful aid to the awakening of a national consciousness and to the up-building of the language and the literature. ”

“ By enlightening the opinions, by expanding the patriotism, and by assimilating the principles, the sentiments, and the manners of those who might resort to this temple of science, to be redistributed in due time through every part of the community, sources of jealousy and prejudice would be diminished, the features of national character would be multiplied, and greater extent given to social harmony. ”

“ They have their place in the drama of our national life, for better or for worse, and their pursuits and character must be recognized and studied by any one who would comprehend our great Western country. ”

“ A nation in which the ruling class had only recently learned to read and write was naturally dazzled by this sister nation, saturated with the learning and culture of the ages, mistress of every brilliant art and accomplishment ”

“ In this general survey, we must confine ourselves to those mighty and celebrated nations who have attained [73] to a high degree of intellectual excellence; and we shall select and briefly state remarkable traits or extraordinary historical facts illustrative of the manners, social institutions, political refinement, and even political history of every nation, worthy of occupying a place in this sketch, in order the better to mark the progress of the intellectual principle in the peculiar culture and modes of thinking of each. ”

“ It is a movement which requires to be carefully studied and wisely stimulated, for it may exert a healthy or a pernicious influence on the national character, according to the direction it takes. The popular literature of a nation and the national character act and react on each other. ”

“ We have postulated as a necessary background of this epic world an enterprise of national significance, in which the entire compass of a national spirit can express itself in the bloom and freshness of its heroic condition. From this fundamental substratum in its simplicity we now further assume the apparition of a particular end, in the realization of which all other aspects of the national character, whether in belief or action, can be represented to our vision. ”

“ The noblesse, and the policy of the central government receive adequate treatment, while the story of the lower classes, the traders, parish priests, peasants, burghers, cossacks, and serfs, their life, customs, local government, religion, and the great national movements which affect them, is told in detail and in the light of a full knowledge derived from long residence among them. ”

“ Morally speaking, it is the mission of each nation in correlation with others to contribute to the universal work of civilization its own peculiar gifts. The state may be regarded as that organization of the public life which is designed to develop the national individuality; to foster the national genius in whatever direction it may seek to express itself, whether in industry, art, literature, or science ”

“ 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." ”

“ Claiming culture, it is the crudest; asseverating its pre-eminence, it is the basest; denying all outside values and virtue, it is the narrowest. Give me the pure and the open heart of the West country. ”

“ Yet even among those peoples where national governments did not appear, some progress was made towards unity through the formation of national languages and literatures, and the development of common feelings, sentiments, and aspirations, so that these peoples were manifestly only awaiting the opportunities of a happier period for the maturing of their national life. ”

“ I therefore believe that it is the first duty of a country to foster the highest culture, and that it should be the aim of every scholar to promote this culture both by his own efforts and his active influence. A nation can become really great in no other way. We live in a country of great possibilities; and the danger is that, as with many men I have known in college, of great potential abilities, the greatness will end where it begins. ”

“ To be sure there is much the country may well learn from the city, the finer phases of real culture, the cultivation of social graces in place of rustic bashfulness and boorish manners, and the saving element of industrial cooperation ”

“ The national literature reveals the myriad shades and hues of private and public feeling, and the more truthful this literary record, the more delicate and noble become the harmonies of local and national thought or emotion with the universal instincts and passions of mankind. ”

“ With reference to the higher products of culture, not only the United States, but in some degree contemporary civilization in general, is a confused, a raw, society, not as being democratic but as being new. ”

“ To have any national significance, the people, generally, must be attracted, and that object would, naturally, be the main thought of the officials, should such a desirable state of things ever come to pass. ”

“ It behoves every thoughtful lover of his country to consider well how the innate national energies of his fellow countrymen may be improved, humanised, and directed to proper objects; and how the mass of the people, instead of being dreaded as a mob of hungry, savage levellers, may come to be looked on as the broad basis and support of the whole national edifice. ”

“ And this is why we should rather engage in the cultural struggle in which priority shall be given to the question of our nationality and our national and religious development. So, then, now is the time to start thinking about our language, about our national literature and about our education in the national spirit1 Now is the time for interest in national and religious questions. ”

“ Our education, our literature, our arts and crafts, and all our good works would range themselves round such centre and help to create in all its richness the commonwealth which our patriotism is in search of. ”

“ The answer to this question will show whether our national education has any distinctively national ideal at its back and any distinctively national motive and object before it. We know what use Western nations have made of their national education. ”

“ The truth comes in upon us from different sources, and in divers streams. The simple details of common culture, the inobtrusive elements of schooling, the plainest fabrics of constant wear, the enjoyment of the staples of daily life, the facts of commerce, and the observations of travel, however limited by individual observation; all, with clearest tone and manifest significance, bespeak the mutual dependence of the different families of men, as also the obligation of all states and commonwealths and empires to contribute to human well-being and the progress of nations. ”

“ Certainly, thousands of years before our day there were empires and kingdoms and city-states, showing considerable advancement in those intellectual pursuits which we call civilization or culture,—that is, in religion, learning, literature, political organization, and business; and such basic institutions as the family, the state, and society go back even further, past our earliest records, until their origins are shrouded in deepest mystery. Despite its brevity, modern history is of supreme importance. ”

“ It is a generous conception, alike honorable to the public spirit and patriotism of the citizens forming the Association, and important in its influence upon the advancement and happiness of society.
“The conquests already made, and the increasing interest evinced by our countrymen in the culture of those useful arts which promote the physical prosperity and moral elevation of a people are a source of just pride and encouragement to the American statesman. ”

“ Those arts that enable our nation to rise in the scale of civilization bring their blessings to all, and patriotic citizens will cheerfully bear a fair share of the burden necessary to make their country great and self-sustaining. ”

“ A national style, or a municipal style which should personify "the energy of a municipality," will not con- flict with a truly great cosmopolitan spirit ; for the more true to itself is the life of a nation, as the life of an individual, the more does it reach out toward and touch the life of other persons and peoples. ”

“ Their culture extends gradually to the whole people. The history of every nation confirms this. It is essentially the history of individuals. They bear the torch of knowledge aloft and lead the people out of darkness into the light. That nation may consider itself happy and fortunate when such persons exercise authority in the State, for they combine in themselves all the qualities necessary to the uplifting of the people. My Prince, some day you will be first in authority among your people. ”