National soul

“ We proceed from the fundamental principle, to elevate the moral, religious, and patriotic spirit in the nation, to instil into it again courage, self-reliance, and readiness to sacrifice everything for national honor and for independence from the foreigner.... ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ They give us in great measure our morality, our politics, our social code, our art of life. They supply the elements of public opinion, the watchwords of patriotism, the standards of thought and action; they are our mutual understandings, our channels of sympathy, our means of co-operation, and the bond of our civil union. They become our moral language; we learn them as we learn our mother tongue; they distinguish us from foreigners; they are, in each of us, not indeed personal, but national characteristics. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When I look around me, my fellow-citizens, and see and know that the prospects of the Republic are brightening, its resources developing, its commerce extending, and its moral influence in the community of nations increasing, my heart is filled with sensations of joy and pride. A poor and despised people a few years ago, borne down by depressing influences at home and abroad, we have risen, in defiance of all obstacles, to a respectable place in the eye of the world. One great nation is inviting us to a full participancy in all its privileges, and to a full community of laws and interests. ”

“ He reminded us that the true greatness of a nation was to be found in its culture, its ideals, its sentiment for beauty, its performances in the intellectual and moral spheres—not in its supply of coal, its volume of trade, its accumulated capital, or its multiplication of railways. Above all—and this was to some of our Party the unkindest cut—he asserted for Religion the chief place among the elements of national well-being. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I, too, would invoke the spirit of patriotism; not in a narrow and restricted sense, but, I trust, with a broad and manly signification; not to cover up our national sins, but to inspire us with sincere repentance; not to hide our shame from the world's gaze, but utterly to abolish the cause of that shame; not to explain away our gross inconsistencies as a nation, but to remove the hateful, jarring, and incongruous elements from the land; not to sustain an egregious wrong, but to unite all our energies in the grand effort to remedy that wrong. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I mean that spirit which has arisen in our country against the menaces and aggression of a foreign nation. A manly sense of national honor, dignity, and independence has appeared which, if encouraged and invigorated by every branch of the Government, will enable us to view undismayed the enterprises of any foreign power and become the sure foundation of national prosperity and glory. ”

“ Patriotism, then, is intense regard for a country's moral greatness; and it expresses itself in that sense of national duty, which he held to be the only justification of a country's national existence. ”

“ But we all recognize something noble in the spirit of the nation where the community agrees that every man shall give up some years of his life to the State for the preservation of the State, and may be called upon to surrender life absolutely in that service. While the manhood of a race does this on the whole with cheerfulness, there must be something of high character in the manhood of that nation. ”

“ 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 ”

“ On the other hand, it must be remembered that the national passion, which in any good sense is simply the public spirit of the good citizen, may take, and every day is taking, directions which lead to no collision between one nation and another; (or, to say the same thing negatively, that it is utterly false to speak as if the desire for one's own nation to show more military strength than others were the only or the right form of patriotism) ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those characteristic traits of our nation, which have been so often misrepresented as signs of an aversion to a republic, and which may be more properly called civic virtues; as, for example, our respect for law, our antipathy to untried political theories, our attachment to traditional customs, and our pride in the history of our country, are no obstacles to, but rather guarantees, and even conditions of a republic, which is to be national and enduring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The higher American patriotism, on the other hand, combines loyalty to historical tradition and precedent with the imaginative projection of an ideal national Promise. ”

“ And what distinguishes us as a nation, in this work of regeneration, from all the nations that have preceded us, is not the sword or physical power and force; but the mild, pacific and gentle spirit of liberty and our institutions; a mighty moral and political influence emanating from us invisibly, and which, like light, will penetrate to the utmost limits of the earth, becoming both visible and tangible in the great and beneficent results produced. ”

“ We honor a distinguished and devoted patriot, who came to this continent in the interests of a poor and oppressed people, and who has told in burning words their woeful story to every heart in two English-speaking nations, appealing against their oppressor, not in passion or violence, but in the spirit of true reform, of argument and public morality. ”

“ Permit me, in conclusion, to say that the nation, as well as the individual and the party, must be measured by its purpose, its ideals and its service. “Let him who would be chiefest among you be the servant of all,” was intended for nations as well as for citizens. Our nation is the greatest in the world and the greatest of all time, because it is rendering a larger service than any other nation is rendering or has rendered. It is giving the world ideals in education, in social life, in government and in religion. It is the teacher of nations, it is the world's torch-bearer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In such a country we live. But I love to think of a glorious nation built upon the will of free men, set apart for the propagation and cultivation of humanity’s best ideal of a [74] free government, and made ready for the growth and fruitage of the highest aspirations of patriotism. This is the country that lives in us. I indulge in no mere figure of speech when I say that our nation, the immortal spirit of our domain, lives in us—in our hearts and minds and consciences. ”

“ How would a nation that has been for some time a contributor to the world's culture and civilisation try to maintain its dignity and prestige? What are the means by which an infant or a degenerate community can hope to rise to the standing of advanced nations? Is there any good in the efforts and energies of agitators, martyrs, and missionaries? What is the value of the work and perseverance of religious preachers, and social reformers, patriots, and philanthropists? ”

“ There is a patriotism of the soul whose claim absolves us from our other and terrene fealty. Our true country is that ideal realm which we represent to ourselves under the names of religion, duty, and the like. ”

“ The final factor of patriotism, according to our analysis, is loyalty to country as an historical object. The ideas and the feelings centering about the conception of country as personal, as living, as having rights and experience, duties and individuality are likely to be vivid and intense. They are the inspirers of supreme devotion to country, and also at times, of morbid national pride and fanatical [236] country-worship. The education of this idea of country we should suppose would be one of the fundamental problems of the development of patriotism. ”

“ In conclusion let me say one word more of the soul of the nation and of the importance of keeping it sensitive and responsive to the claims of truth, justice, liberty, and progress. In speaking of the soul of the nation I deal in no cant phraseology. I speak of that mysterious, invisible, impalpable something which underlies the life alike of individuals and of nations, and determines their character and destiny.
It is the soul that makes a nation great or small, noble or ignoble, weak or strong. It is the soul that exalts it to happiness, or sinks it to misery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let us go to the fountain of unadulterated patriotism, and, performing a solemn lustration, return divested of all selfish, sinister, and sordid impurities, and think alone of our God, our country, our conscience, and our glorious Union. ”

“ They could not conceal that these are owing, not merely to physical and local, but also to moral causes--to the political liberty, the general diffusion of knowledge, the prevalence of sound, moral, and religious principles, which give force and sustained energy to the character of a people, and which in fact, have been the acknowledged and wonderful supporters of their own national power and glory. ”

“ It thus renders merited homage and pays just tribute to those who have increased the treasures of its civilization and added a new feature to its moral physiognomy; it establishes the union of ideas that assures the conservation of the national genius, and maintains and perpetuates the consciousness of the nation. ”

“ Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be, our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever! ”

“ It is only through our country that we can have a recognized collective existence.” [165] This, then, patriotism quite often actually is. And once more, in its positive recognition of the country as truly one of a community, patriotism turns out to be the working of the will to national individuality. ”

“ I ask you, in the name of humanity and patriotism, to 'go and do likewise.' Your country demands your assistance; respond generously, quickly; think of the proud eminence on which you stand before the working-men of the world,—as American citizens!—and acquit yourselves as though you felt your dignity. ”