National existence

“ Just in proportion as such ideas are numerous, clear and true in the national mind, do their power augment and their domain extend; just so much more quickly and firmly do they express themselves, in acts, forms and institutions, and thus enable the nation to enrich, beautify and strengthen its own existence. ”

“ In every nation which has been allowed free development, while it has the qualities common to all humanity, it will be found that some one idea was predominant, and in its predominance regrouped about itself other ideas. ”

“ But when we study a State at its centre, its political action, its organization, its spirit, the management of its institutions of learning and of charity, the tendencies, restrictive or liberal, of its legislation, even the tone of social life and the code of manners, we discover distinctions, individualities, almost as many differences as resemblances. And we see—the saving truth in our national life—that each State is a well-nigh indestructible entity, an empire in itself, proud and conscious of its peculiarities, and jealous of its rights. ”

“ It is the living nation—the nation organized for its historical mission—the nation of yesterday and of to-morrow." A nation, that is, is a people in so far as they are united by traditions and purposes; and national Sovereignty implies an attachment to national history and traditions which permits only the very gradual alteration of these traditions in the direction of increasing democracy. ”

“ When we remember the remarkable manner, entirely novel in the history of political science, in which our Constitution creates a new nation and its supreme national government and yet keeps alive the former independent nations and their federation, the next sentence of that letter is of absorbing interest. ”

“ We are now, accordingly, in a better position to understand the meaning of the national ideal. With the progress of the long revolution it has gone on growing in power and depth and significance. Each step of enfranchisement has increased the facilities for the formation and expression of the national will, and given clearness and intensity to its volitions, till, in its modern form, the nation State is a moral and intellectual whole, whose unifying principle has something of the force of personality. ”

“ Is it not to be national and not sectional, independent and not colonial? Is it not to have a high conception of what this great new country should be, and to follow out that ideal with loyalty and truth? ”

“ Local self-government, which is the pride of our institutions, will be reconciled with the national supremacy in maintenance of human rights, and the two together will constitute the elemental principles of the Republic. ”

“ All these ideals of freedom, of brotherhood, of power, of justice, of beauty, which have been at one time or another the fundamental idea in civilizations, are heaven-born, and descended from the divine world, incarnating first in the highest minds in each race, perceived by them and transmitted to their fellow-citizens; and it is the emergence or manifestation of one or other of these ideals in a group which is the beginning of a nation ”

“ To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nations have the government which they deserve, or rather, the government which they have is truly no more than the magnified and public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation. ”

“ 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. He enters into it, and it becomes in oversoul to him, and gives to all his works a character and grandeur and a relation to the works of his fellow-citizens, so that all he does conspires with the labors of others for unity and magnificence of effect. ”

“ The objects to which our faculties are applied have a necessary influence over our minds. How diminutive, nay, pitiful, those appear which now engross public attention and for which parties contend, when compared with those for which the founders of the republic staked their fortunes and their lives!—the creation of a great independent nation and the organization of a national yet restricted government. ”

“ We will now leave this extraordinary nation, which has furnished materials for history of the most interesting nature, as it regards the character of man; their civil, political, and religious institutions, and the moral and social ties that connect society. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this new nation was realized the dream of the social philosophers and philanthropists of all ages: a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, resting on the deep and solid foundations of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. ”

“ And in the first place I say, that wherever there is in the Christian and civilized world a nationality of character—wherever there exists a nation of sufficient knowledge and wealth and population to constitute a Government, then a National Government is a necessary and proper result of nationality of character. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For good or for evil, tremendous issues follow on the gain or on the loss of national independence. ... Where the seeds of a strong national civilisation, of a strong national character, and of intellectual wealth have been deeply sown in any human soil, the preservation of it from conquest, and from invasion, and from foreign rule, is the essential condition of its yielding its due contribution to the progress of the world. ”

“ So the Republic, rising from its baptism of blood with a national life more robust, a national union more complete, and a national influence ever widening, shall go forever forward in its benign mission to humanity. ”

“ 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 patriot loses all sense of the distinction between State, nation and government. In our quieter moments, the Nation or Country forms the basic idea of society. We think vaguely of a loose population spreading over a certain geographical portion of the earth’s surface, speaking a common language, and living in a homogeneous civilization. Our idea of Country concerns itself with the non-political aspects of a people, its ways of living, its personal traits, its literature and art, its characteristic attitudes towards life. ”

“ In a word, I am an American citizen. I have a heritage in each and every provision incorporated in the Constitution of my country, and should this heritage be attempted to be filched from me by any man or body of men, I should deem the provocation sufficiently grievous to stake even life in defense of it. I would plant every colored man in this country on a platform of this nature—to think for himself, to speak for himself, to act for himself. This is the ideal citizen of an ideal government such as ours is modelled to become. ”

“ And these, both of them, rest on Establishments, which, though not indeed national, are cosmopolitan; and perhaps here, what the individual man does not lose by these conditions of his rearing, the citizen, and the State of which he is a citizen loses. ”

“ I would like to underline in the most emphatic way that it is possible to have this Great State, essentially socialistic, owning and running the land and all the great public services, sustaining everybody in absolute freedom at a certain minimum of comfort and well-being, and still leaving most of the interests, amusements, and adornments of the individual life, and all sorts of collective concerns, social and political discussion, religious worship, philosophy, and the like to the free personal initiatives of entirely unofficial people. ”

“ My purpose has been to exhibit the European nations as a group of historic individuals with purposes, opportunities, and limitations analogous to those of actual individuals. An individual has no meaning apart from the society in which his individuality has been formed. A national state is capable of development only in relation to the society of more or less nationalized states in the midst of which its history has been unfolded. ”

“ Releasing themselves from colonial dependence on a transatlantic power, we find these several communities, now grown to be States, becoming conscious, through common perils, victories, and hopes, of national unity and life, and ordaining institutes of national government binding upon all. ”

“ The principle of nationality is comparatively new, unsettled, whereas the state is a very old institution and so universal that many for that very reason look upon it as the most necessary and most valuable achievement of human society. ”

“ That republic, the United States of America, full of wisdom and of strength, exhibits this phenomenon, and each day their prosperity shows an increase which astonishes other nations. Thus it was reserved for the New World to teach the Old that existence is possible and peaceable under the rule of liberty and equality. ”

“ From these considerations we conclude that civilization, as it advances, is but the index of the capacity of human beings to form themselves into larger and larger nationalities (perhaps ultimately to result in a federal union of all nations) , each consisting of numerous parts, performing distinct functions; yet so organized harmoniously that each part shall preserve all the freedom that it requires for its utmost development and happiness, and yet depend for its own life upon the life of the entire national body. ”

“ Our wars, our social conflict, our enormous economic stresses, are all aspects of that adjustment. The loyalties and allegiances to-day are at best provisional loyalties and allegiances. Our true State, this state that is already beginning, this state to which every man owes his utmost political effort, must be now this nascent Federal World State to which human necessities point. Our true God now is the God of all men. Nationalism as a God must follow the tribal gods to limbo. Our true nationality is mankind. ”

“ As a nation develops in civilisation, or foreign policy, or in specialised ambitions, or in consciousness of nationality, or in peculiar constitutional identity, it has to develop new branches or systems of law, or to borrow them ready-made from nations whose polity is in advance of its own, who have made themselves representative nations in the particular branch of sociology in which it desires to regulate itself. ”

“ Nations have their character to maintain as well as individuals; and under constitutional governments—where all classes more or less participate in the exercise of political power—the national character will necessarily depend more upon the moral qualities of the many than of the few. ”

“ This is seen most crudely in the case of what is called nationalism. Nationalism, in theory, is the doctrine that men, by their sympathies and traditions, form natural groups, called "nations," each of which ought to be united under one central Government. ”

“ The theory of a power over these regions based on the principles of the law of nature and of nations, granting that this law is itself based on the divine right of human equality, protects the rights of persons, of communities, of states and of nations. ”

“ Is it strange that, penetrated and nerved with the high motives to be derived from these solemn considerations, the American people are prepared to accept the responsibilities of the great occasion, and even to wade through blood for the realization of the grandeur of those human hopes which are now intrusted to their keeping? One nation—one government—one universal freedom within those imperial boundaries which have heretofore been the theatre of our glorious achievements as a people! ”

“ Through this the citizen is formed in Advance.
"The government gives the national form to souls.3425 Nations, in the long run, are what the government makes them—soldiers, citizens, men when so disposed, a populace, canaille if it pleases," being fashioned by their education. ”

“ The Constitution was the expression not only of a political faith, but also of political fears. It was wrought both as the organ of the national interest and as the bulwark of certain individual and local rights. ”

“ Such things constitute the spirit of the institutions of a country; that portion of their influence which is least regarded by common, and especially by English thinkers, though the institutions of every country, not under great positive oppression, produce more effect by their spirit than by any of their direct provisions, since by it they shape the national character. ”