Every nation, in proportion as its nationality
is thoroughly alive, must be leavened by the ferment of some such faith.
But there are significant differences between the faith of, say, an
Englishman in the British Empire and that of an American in the Land of
Democracy. The contents of an Englishman's national idea tends to be
more exclusive. His patriotism is anchored to the historical
achievements of Great Britain and restricted thereby. As a good patriot
he is bound to be more preoccupied with the inherited fabric of national
institutions and traditions than he is with the ideal and more than
national possibilities of the future. This very loyalty to the national
fabric does, indeed, imply an important ideal content; but the national
idealism of an Englishman, a German, or even a Frenchman, is heavily
mortgaged to his own national history and cannot honestly escape the
debt. The good patriot is obliged to offer faithful allegiance to a
network of somewhat arbitrary institutions, social forms, and
intellectual habits--on the ground that his country is exposed to more
serious dangers from premature emancipation than it is from stubborn
conservatism.
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