The Psychology of Nations Part 10

Upon the hardships of war, its economic futility and its sheer senselessness, when looked at from the standpoint of any rational desire, many base their conclusion that war is evil. The working man and all the ma.s.ses are likely to concur in this opinion. When they examine war they see that they themselves as they think are used in the interest of the few, that they shed their blood for a glory in which they do not share. They say, all men are brothers, and so why should they kill one another. Men seem more real to them than do boundaries of countries which they never see, and the interests of wealth that is also invisible.

Such thought as this has behind it some of the most powerful minds, as we know. It is Tolstoi's philosophy, and it is the argument of such men as Novicow. The professional economist and the student of history add their protests. They say that military peoples fade away, while the peaceful live and prosper, that "the country whose military power is irresistible is doomed." These are the words of Roberts. Some try to demonstrate that nothing is gained economically by war; that all the work of war is destructive, to every one engaged in it. It is argued that the nation that is suited to live will prevail without wars; and that without this inner superiority, war will avail nothing.

War is bad business, in the opinion of these economic thinkers. War is like setting the dog on the customer at the door, the practical man in England complained at the beginning of the present war. As to war being a.s.sociated with intelligence and with virtue in nations, or as to its ever producing either intellectual or moral qualities, many would flatly deny that war ever has such a result. The opposite would seem nearer the truth to them. Military nations are unintelligent nations, and militarism is always brutalizing.

Such pacifism and the dream of universal peace are no new ideas in the world. Like the philosophy of war pacifism has a long history. There have been pacifists everywhere and presumably at all times, since pacifism is quite as much a temperament as it is an idea or a philosophy. Cramb tells us that all recent centuries have had their doctrines of pacifism, each century having its own characteristic variety. In the time of the Marlborough wars, there appeared the book of Abbe de St. Pierre denouncing all wars. In the middle of the nineteenth century there is the doctrine of the Manchester school, maintaining that the peace of Europe must be secured not by religion, but by the cooperation of the industrial forces of the continent.

Finally, says Cramb, we see the characteristic thought of the twentieth century in the position that war is bad because it is contrary to social well-being and is economically profitless, alike to the victor and the vanquished. This is the pacifism of the socialist who holds that the ties of common labor and economic state are fundamental, and divisions into nationality are secondary and unimportant; and that militarism belongs to the pernicious state of society which perpetuates capitalism and privilege and to government as a function of the favored cla.s.ses.

This is certainly not the place to try to put order into this conflicting ma.s.s of opinion about war and peace by working out the principles of a philosophy of good and evil, since this would mean to attack one of the most fundamental of all problems of philosophy. It seems to be plain, however, that neither upon biological grounds nor by ethical principles, nor by finding any consensus in the desires and opinions of thinkers can we reach any hard and fast conclusions about the good and evil of war. It is rather by a broad interpretation of the world and of history and the nature of national consciousness, by some genetic view of national life, that we are most likely to see our way toward a practical view of the present good and evil of war. War is a phase of the whole process of social development of nations. We think of nations as living and growing, and of a world which is gradually maturing. War obtains a natural explanation on sociological and psychological principles, not as a disease, but as a natural consequence and condition of the formation of nations, or of any type of horde or group. In the course of the development of nations we see psychological factors coming more and more to the front. Desires which are more or less consciously avowed become the motives of history. It is in the play of these desires: their fixation, their generalization, and transformation, the manner in which they become attached to specific objects, that we seek the explanation of wars and of the especial psychology of nations. Nations have lived secluded and guarded lives, because of the nature of the desires which were most fundamental in their lives, and the objects upon which these desires have become directed. Now nations show some signs of emerging from their seclusion, of abandoning their ambitions of empire, and leading a more complex and more practical life.

In this progress we see the possibility of the final disappearance of war. But we have no right to pervert either history or education in the effort to eliminate war, or even to pa.s.s judgments upon war prematurely or upon the basis of personal preferences, or the moods of any moment. The whole world might, conceivably, be brought together and be made to declare solemnly that there should be no more war.

Nations would thereby voluntarily relinquish their aggressive thoughts, put aside the love they have for the heroic and take justice and peace as their watchwords. And all this would seem ideal. But if the elimination of war should mean that we have no longer anything for which men are willing to die, if merely to escape from war we voluntarily sacrifice good that more than counterbalances the evil we overcome, we should say that peace had been bought at too high a price. _Terrible as war is, it cannot be judged by itself alone._ We have a right to look forward to a time when there shall be no more war, just as everywhere it seems to be instinctive for us to try to gain good without its attendant trouble and evil. In the meantime the world had best busy itself, mainly, in our view, with creating those things that are best, rather than in destroying those things that are worst. Nations, like individuals, must lead bravely hazardous lives, without too much thought of dangers. Peace as a sole program for the making of history appears to be too narrow, and especially too unproductive. Internationalism that is merely a combination of peoples to prevent war is not very inspiring, especially since it is doubtful whether it even leads to peace. A broad historical view that will enable us just now to make good come out of the evil of war will be a better organ of conscious evolution than a philosophy of peace can possibly be.

Such views as these give us at least some clews to the educational and pedagogical problems of war and peace. We can distinguish between an education which deals specifically with such problems, endeavoring to treat them sharply and with finality, making clear moral decisions, and an education which by enriching the mind and by educating all the selective faculties leads to an appreciation of all great practical and moral questions as aspects of the whole of history and of life.

Let us see what the specific teaching of peace may and may not include. First of all we cannot, for educational purposes, judge everything in the lives of nations by _moral_ principles. The ideal of universal brotherhood and cooperation, of sacrifice and altruism, cannot be realized in the present stage of history. On the other hand, the stern picture of justice is one that fits into the present mood of the world. Justice is the natural link between individualism and altruism. A world determined upon seeing justice done, a world which, without setting absolute values upon peace and war, does distinguish between just and unjust wars, between the demands and the needs of peoples, leans toward the moral life. It has little to say about duties as yet, or comparatively little, but it has a strong conception of rights. A deep enough interest in justice, by its own momentum, introduces duties into the practical life. In time the world will perhaps not be satisfied with seeing and recognizing justice, and ensuring it in great crises; it will make justice as a matter of course.

This idea of justice seems, on the whole, to be the best basis for the teaching now of international morality. The teaching of pacifism, enlarging upon the biological waste of war, trying to present the realism of war in its worst light in order to overcome the warlike spirit and to a.s.sist the doctrines of internationalism to take effect upon the mind seems to be the wrong way of teaching peace. We seem to be obligated to teach war as it is. We cannot conceal its heroic side for fear of perpetuating war, and we must not conceal the brutality of war for fear of destroying morale and the fighting spirit. And it is to be much doubted whether it is _ever_ necessary to teach history unfairly and one-sidedly in times either of war or of peace. We depend upon larger effects and deeper judgments than can be produced by selecting and distorting the facts. Nothing is meaner in national life than dishonest history.

Education in the ideal of peace, which we may hope to be the state of the world in the future, will be an adjustment of the mind to new and practical modes of life rather than the establishing of a principle.

The educated att.i.tude of mind which will best safeguard the peace of the world must include an intelligent knowledge of all the agencies proposed to aid in establishing this state of harmony toward which we look forward. We must all know about arbitration, leagues of nations, courts of honor, understand diplomacy better and the arguments for disarmament, understand the economic and the industrial situation, the possibilities of cooperation, reduction of the rights and privileges of cla.s.ses, democratic movements. The inculcation of such knowledge is an education for peace. There is little that is abstruse in any of these ideas, and the very young child is not too young to know something of these wider aspects of the social life. All these may be presented in a concrete form as a part of the work of conveying a knowledge of current history.

We may think of various cures for war, and various efforts that might be made educationally to prevent war. Peace might effectually be cultivated by an educational propaganda. But after all it is not such cures of war as this that we are most concerned about in the work of education. We might even tend to establish in this way a peace which would be detrimental to the higher interests of civilization. _A true educational philosophy, at any rate, is not to be dislodged from its purpose of keeping education constructive rather than inhibitory._ This inst.i.tution of education must not be too much influenced by the temporary moods of the day, by the present gloomy evidences of the devastation of war. We must teach and prepare for an abundant life in which there is glory and wide opportunity, and in which the motives of power may be satisfied. Then peace can take care of itself. But this abundant life must be a life of _activity_, not of mere patriotism and subjective glorification and nationalistic interest. Vanity, the low order of enthusiasms, the glory of display, can no longer have a place in this national life.

There appears to be a pedagogical lesson in the contrast between the heroic and the moral view of teaching war and peace ill.u.s.trated by the German philosophy of war and the ideal of the Boy Scout organization.

Deducting something for literary exaggeration, we may say that education cannot afford to neglect either of these att.i.tudes, but must indeed in some way combine them. The exaggeration consists on one side in praising the specific act of war; but on the other side there is plainly lacking something of the dramatic appeal which any ideal life for the young must have. War is an evil, but the spirit that makes war is by no means an evil. The philosophy of war proves its failure by ignoring the moral ideal altogether, or regarding morality as something solely national, but the other, it may be, puts the moral ideal in a pedagogically impossible position. Both the content and the form must be taken into account in any educational plan that hopes to exert power or to be influential in any important way now, and it is the form which, more than anything else, is still lacking in our whole procedure of education.

_Preparedness and Military Training_

Military training has now of course become a practical question with us and with every nation. It is the military use of military education that must first of all be considered. For that reason it must primarily be a problem upon which political authorities and military experts must decide. These experts must be competent to tell us what military equipment is necessary at any time to meet the requirements of our political situation, and they must be able to advise about the amount and kind of actual military training necessary to make this physical equipment most effective. All this, plainly, must be provided whether it be good or bad from a general educational standpoint. But preparedness and national defense mean, of course, more than the possession of guns and more than military training as such. And there can be no hard and fast line between military preparedness and the wider technical preparedness in which all the equipment and skill of scientific and mechanical activities of the country are always ready to be mobilized in the defense of it; or between these and the still more general preparedness through the organization and control of the human factor in ways that are not specifically military or mechanically technical at all.

If preparation for defense is by no means exhausted by military training, on the other hand not all military training is intended for defense. Decision about the actual amount and kind of military training, we say, may be left to the expert, but it is for the psychologist and the educator to decide whether we need a mere minimum of such training or a general military training for educational purposes. After all, however, this is perhaps more a matter of taste in educational practices than of learning. There is plenty of opinion at least on both sides. Some maintain that military discipline is of very great benefit to the man and to society. From the German point of view it is the equivalent of hygiene for the individual. It is a national regimen for physical and mental health. It is also the symbol and the expression of social solidarity. Many believe that the discipline of soldiering would be especially good for all American boys. But there is no dearth of evidence on the other side--that military training in so far as it is really conducted in the military manner is brutalizing.

After all, we say this may be a matter of preference. Some like military discipline in the schools and everywhere; some do not. The present writer for one will confess that he does not. It is not the danger of making a people warlike that one sees in it, so much as the certainty of introducing into all the daily life a spirit that is inconsistent with our stage of civilization and with the most wholesome spirit of education. It savors of the unprogressive. It means, in our opinion, the introduction into the school, in a far too easy and simple way, and consequently at far too low a level, something that ought to be put into education in a different manner.

The sense of solidarity and the idealism which the German has found in his military discipline we must express in some other way. It is especially the unproductiveness of military life, and the constant suggestion of that which is archaic without either the practical setting or the ornamental life to which such things belong, that are especially to be charged against militarism.

We ought to ask, rather, how peace morale, and the essentials of the warlike spirit may be maintained _without military training_. Is it not rather by way of the more general and untechnical processes of education which make for physical expertness, by fundamental social education, by giving attention to our foundations of religious education, that we shall be able to create and sustain the most efficient morale? The best foundation for all necessary military activities of a free people appears to be a by-product, so to speak, of peaceful life sustained at a high point of efficiency and enthusiasm. Military training disconnected from its immediate use and application in war must appear to some and indeed to many as a misfit in modern civilized life. This is not an argument for pacifism, however. The war has taught us that militarism and military capacity in high degree may spring up from very peaceful soil, and also that military training, however perfect, is no subst.i.tute for the generic virtues out of which courage and patriotism grow. In the long run will it not be the country that can do without military training that will have the advantage? Or the country in which military preparedness is so merged in everything else as to be indistinguishable from the rest of life? Is there not, in a word, a preparedness that will make a country superior and safe both in war and in peace?

CHAPTER V

THE TEACHING OF PATRIOTISM

It would be hard to find a word (unless it be democracy) about which so many questions gather as now cling to the word "patriotism."

Patriotism is praised as the highest virtue; it is also cursed as the cause of war. Some think of it as the _sole_ cause of war. Some would like to see it disappear for the reason that they believe it at best an old and out-lived social virtue, now having become merely ornamental and an obstacle to the true socialization of the world.

Some think patriotism still the center of the moral and the social life.

This is not the place to attempt a psychological a.n.a.lysis of patriotism, but we may at least try to enumerate the princ.i.p.al factors in it, and say what we think patriotism as a virtue--or a vice--is.

_Patriotism in our view is normally loyalty to country as a functioning unit in a world of nations. It is devotion to all the aspects and functions of a country as an historical ent.i.ty._ We must think of these historical ent.i.ties, moreover, as leading lives in which, although their own ambitions for honor and greatness are legitimate, there must be a practical recognition of the legitimacy of similar interests on the part of all other nations, and in which the recognition of the common interests of nations is also freely made.

Since nations perform no one single function and have no single motive of life in their normal state, patriotism can be no devotion to a single purpose or cause. Such patriotism as this, we may say, does not antagonize internationalism. Loyalty to country is loyalty to the functions and interests that properly belong to country. The individual, the family, the country and all intervening groups and ent.i.ties are natural formations. To each of these ent.i.ties there is due a loyalty precisely measured by the character of the functions which these ent.i.ties perform.

This view of patriotism is plainly, both in its theoretical aspect and its practical consequences, widely different from those that end in pure internationalism. Its essential feature is that it recognizes the validity of all ent.i.ties and groups about which deep feeling has grown up. This means, of course, that as criteria of social values these feelings are placed ahead of certain logical or scientific considerations. Pure internationalism of the intellectual type recognizes the validity only of the whole world group. Nicolai, for example, says that there is a morality and there are rights pertaining to the individual and to the whole of humanity, but all intervening groups are temporary and artificial. That, certainly, we should not agree with. The coming greater coordination of the world we may suppose will deepen and intensify patriotism, rather than diminish it.

The h.o.m.ogeneity toward which the biologists tell us we are tending and ought to approach is one in which, it is likely, still sharper national outlines may well appear. The ambitions, the functions, and the culture of nations ought to be made clearer rather than be lost in the coming internationalism. We shall still in the Hegelian sense find our reality in and through the state. An aroused sense of the function and worth of country will be the basis of patriotism. Advancement toward internationalism will be made by a generalized patriotism rather than by outgrowing patriotism. That is, it is by pa.s.sing from a deepened loyalty to country through a sense of the validity and right of the patriotism of all peoples that international social consciousness will be developed.

So all those very numerous views of patriotism which a.s.sert that it is only through a decline of patriotism that a rational international order can ever be established, appear to be wrong. A fundamental question is at issue here. It concerns in part the criteria of valuation in the field of the social life. The kind of cosmopolitanism and internationalism that demands the final abrogation of the sentiment of patriotism is, as we have intimated, a rationalistic doctrine. It is an attempt to extend objective principles into the realm of social values. Reason tells us, they say, that we ought to organize universally and obliterate national lines. Reason tells us we should make no distinction between ourselves and strangers, between enemies and allies. But by the same rationalism we may break up any loyalty. Patriotism is an inner, a spiritual force, and it has its roots in moods and forms of appreciation which have a certain finality about them, for the reason that they are deposits from the whole course of human history. Veblen says it is a matter of habit to what particular nationality a man will become attached on arriving at years of discretion. That is true, and it is of course the whole secret of loyalty. But it is not a matter of unimportance whether a man shall become attached to any country. It is the dynamic power of loyalty that is in question, if we consider its practical value. Loyalty grows because it has a use, which is related to the most basic feelings. It is not a product of reason, and cannot justly be judged on purely rational grounds.

Any political ideal, or any plan for a world order, that would minimize patriotism is unnatural. The forms of socialism that do this and the _laissez faire_ tendencies appear to have left out of the reckoning some of the modes of evaluating experience which are most basic. We may recognize all the excess of provincialism in the native patriotism of the peasant, and all the egoistic motives in the patriotism of the aristocrat and the militarist, but still we see no place in the world for the man without a country. It is not yet the workmen of the cities, who say that all men are brothers, who can lead us to a better social order. Patriotism must be educated, modernized, made more productive, but certainly its work is not yet done. It cannot be cast aside as something archaic and only a part of the ornamental and useless enc.u.mbrances of life. _It is not by weakening loyalty to country, but by strengthening it, that internationalism will be made secure._ If patriotism fits into modern life like sand in the machinery, as Veblen says, we must see how patriotism may be made to do better service.

Some views about patriotism which thus disparage it seem to be based upon a biological conception of it. Not a few writers apparently think of patriotism as a fixed trait of the human organism, even as a kind of mendelian character unrelated to other social qualities. This trait antagonizes social progress, but it is preserved because of secondary values which it represents, such as moral or aesthetic values.

According to these views patriotism may be complex, but it acts like a unitary character. It is subject, theoretically, to selection, but as a matter of fact it remains a strong factor in the temperament of nearly all races.

But in our view patriotism is something less precise than all this would imply. It is a form in which the most fundamental and general of desires are expressed, in becoming fixated upon their most natural and necessary objects. It is an aspect of the whole process of development of the affective life. Leaving out patriotism (if such a thing were possible) would mean a break in the continuity of the social life. It would leave one group of functions without their natural support in desire. Economists sometimes seem to leave out of account the profound emotional forces and the irresistible tendencies which make social groups. They want organizations without the moods and impulses by which alone social bodies are formed or sustained; and they expect to see organization broken up or interest in it lost while all the conditions that keep alive the pa.s.sion for it are intact. Patriotism and the existence of nations seem, however, to be the opposite sides of the same fact. And we may a.s.sume that so long as nations exist, at any rate, patriotism will exist, and one of the most necessary functions of public education will be the regulation of the motives and feelings which are contained in this sentiment.

Patriotism is first of all to be considered, then, as a phase of the social life as a whole, rather than as an unique emotion or a special variety of loyalty. It is a way in which the sum of tendencies that enter into the social life become fixated upon certain qualities of the environment, or upon certain objects. Patriotism will best be understood in a practical way by observing its objects. Patriotism is a total mood; country is a total object. But the mood of patriotism expresses varied desires, and the object of patriotism is a highly complex and variable object. In being loyal to or devoted to country in the sense which we usually mean when we say one is patriotic, we are devoted to at least the following objects: 1) physical country as home; 2) the ways, customs, standards and beliefs of the country; 3) the group of people const.i.tuting the nation; and here race, social solidarity, ideal constructions of an united people having common purposes and possessions enter; 4) leaders; 5) country as an historical ent.i.ty having rights and interests--a living being having experiences, ideals and characteristics. The educational problem is of course the regulation of the attachment of the individuals of a nation to these objects. In one sense this educational problem of patriotism is nothing less than that of developing social consciousness itself.

It is precisely the task of fostering or creating in the child the basis of all loyalty. Given a loyal mind in the child and a normal environment, we need to be concerned but little about the causes and the groups upon which that loyalty will expend itself, for the conditions are all present for forming an attachment to every natural group. Considered generically and psychologically there is no patriotism, we say, marked off from everything else, and there is no one object that excites patriotic loyalty. All educational influences that strengthen attachment to home, all social feeling, devotion to the ways of any group and obedience to its standards, respect for all law and authority, all appreciation of historic relations, help to develop patriotism, merely because country, in these aspects, is an omnipresent object to which the feelings thus engendered will automatically become to some extent attached.

The first task in the teaching of patriotism (first at least as regards the obviousness of the need) is to give all children a vivid sense of country as physical object, and a deep aesthetic appreciation of this object--although of course this idea of physical country cannot be detached from everything else. Each country has its different problem. Ours is to create a total country, in the imagination of the young. A German writer not long ago predicted that the future of America lay in the direction of breaking up into a little England, a little Ireland, and a little of the other nationalities here represented. That particular danger may seem remote enough, but in another way we do continue to be lacking in unity. Our patriotism has been too local, and America, even after the great war, is to some extent still a collection of geographical regions. New England, the South, the Coast are more real to many than country as a whole. Our great distances, and the impossibility of clearly imagining them have necessarily presented obstacles thus far to a unified image of country. The time may come, and perhaps soon, when such a divided consciousness of country will be a grave flaw in our national life.

It must be a serious function of some kind of geography to give reality to the idea of country, although of course we cannot separate entirely geographical from historical idea of country. The teaching of the geography of the native land must be different from other geography. Native land must have a warmth and home feeling about it that other countries do not have, but as yet the psychological conditions for this have apparently not been worked out. With our present facilities in pictorial art, the geographical element in the idea of country seems controllable. The minds of children are exceedingly impressionable in this direction. Intensity of feeling and vividness of imagination are at the disposal of the educator. The love of color, especially, must be used to make lasting impressions upon the mind. We need to notice also that the idea of physical country that enters most into patriotic feeling is not an idea of city streets but of the open country. It is the country that inspires the strongest home feeling, and it is the country that is the basis of the sense of changelessness and eternity of native land, that is a strong element in patriotic sentiment. This element of patriotism, it is plain, is something aesthetic. It is not so much a moral loyalty to country that is inspired by the everlasting hills, as an aesthetic love of it as the home land. This aesthetic love of the home land is a response to such stimuli as the beautiful arouses everywhere. It is susceptible, therefore, to all the influences of art--of music, picture, symbol; these must all be employed in teaching patriotism. The theme of home is especially sensitive to the effects of music. It is this idea of home, enlarged and enriched by pictorial representation of country, deeply impressed and influenced by music, and unified and imbued with the feeling of personal possession by the story of country that is the core of patriotic feeling. It is the function of art, especially of music, to help to make the home feeling of the child normal and enthusiastic--to raise it above the stage of being an "anxiety of animal life," as Nicolai terms the primitive love of home. Art must help to remove the fears and depressions that may lurk in the idea of home, which are great obstacles to the development of the higher devotions. It is the lack of normal love of home in the city, we should say, that makes socialism and all forms of internationalism that breed so rapidly there such dangerous moods in a democracy.

Without true home love, we may conclude, the wider loyalties can never be quite wholesome, although they may be intense and fanatical.

The second element in patriotism we identify as the love of, or loyalty to, the sum of the customs, beliefs, and standards that make up the _mores_ of a people. A peculiarly perplexing educational problem arises, since there are two opposite evils to be avoided We may too readily cultivate a spirit which either takes the form of a narcissistic love of one's own ways, or which, extraverted, so to speak, becomes a fanatical ambition to impose one's own culture upon the world; or, on the other hand we might become too self-critical, too cosmopolitan, and too receptive toward all foreign culture.

National conceit, complacency and destinism face us in one direction, the danger of losing our ident.i.ty and our individuality and our mission in the other. These problems of course confront all nations; they are especially urgent in America, because of the composite nature of our national life and the rapid changes that take place in it, and also because of the ideal nature of the bond that holds us together.

We are still a somewhat inchoate and flowing ma.s.s of social elements, imperfectly coordinated, manifestly, yet deeply united by ideals which appeal to very deep emotions. Our work is to maintain social solidarity, preserve and educate certain fundamental qualities of our national life which are our real claims to individuality as a people.

These essential traits, perhaps because of our newness as a form of civilization, appear to be less clearly defined, less definitely represented in inst.i.tutions, and to be more abstract than the qualities that make up the essential character of other peoples.

Our educational problem is, naturally, different from all others. We are committed to an idea of liberty. We make this principle of freedom the dominant in all our national life. We have not tried, and cannot consistently attempt to centralize our educational inst.i.tutions very much, or even allow our culture to become crystallized into a definite type, for this would be almost as bad as denying our principle of religious freedom. But we cannot, in the other direction, become too diversified intellectually, and still less in regard to more fundamental aspects of life, for this would break up our unity altogether, or determine it more and more in the direction of political coercion. Thus far, it appears, it has been our great virtue as a people that we have remained united by emotional forces, or by the suggestive power of an idea. Sooner or later we shall need to see whither our present tendencies lead, and education must in all probability be put to work to control and regulate the elements that make for unity and for disruption in our life. _Our work as educators will be to maintain a working harmony in the affective and instinctive life of the people._ We need now, and we shall need more and more, religious, moral and aesthetic unity in our life as a nation--not a forced and superficial agreement, but a deep harmony of ideals and moods. This purpose must never be lost sight of by the educator. It must be made to pervade all our educational philosophy and all our plans for the school. This educational problem exists of course everywhere in some degree, and in regard to all manner of social groups. But American life as a whole is peculiarly a growth in which diverse and even divergent elements must continue to be brought together and held together through the power of ideas which are subject to many influences. Diversity and differentiation are added as fast as the process of a.s.similation can be carried on. There can be no closing up of differences in a final perfection and security.

Must we not, then, make the education of instincts and feelings, and the control of the basic moods, rather than the development and stimulation of specialization and differentiation our first and chief concern? Must we not do this even at a loss of efficiency in some directions, if necessary? Certainly we must not go too fast nor too far towards industrialism. To control any tendency to over differentiation and industrialism that is now likely to occur we must have a broad humanitarianism and a humanistic ideal of culture (by which we do not mean cla.s.sicism). _The sharing of all experiences that represent our spirit and purpose and American ideas, and equal opportunity to realize them, must be our thought in planning our educational work._ The future of America may well depend upon our power, or upon the power of our original idea, to hold people together by the essential moods in which our American ideas are represented.

The production, out of these elemental moods, of common interests on a high level will be, we take it, the only preventive in the end of the growth of common interests on a low level, which is always threatened in democracies, and is the way democracies tend to destroy themselves by their democracy. Education in the fundamentals of industrial life, in social relations, in play and in art, in religion, is what we most need--the latter, we may conclude, most of all. We must have in some way a greater religious unity and more religion, not by attempting an impossible amalgamation of creeds as was promulgated by some of the founders of the New j.a.pan, but by an education that includes and brings forth all that is common in religion. That at least is the only kind of unity that offers hope finally of making a world safe with democracy in it. This is not a plea for a back-to-nature movement, for the simple life, for a life which tends away from industrialism.

Industrialism will go on, if for no other reason, because pastoral or agricultural peoples would soon be at a disadvantage in an industrial world as it is organized now, for want of rapid increase in population. But it is implied that industry itself must be made suitable for the democratic life. It means that we must go back of the ident.i.ties of language and obedience to common laws, and take as our educational 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 our patriotism is sincere enough so that we shall be milling to sacrifice for country our religious intolerance and bigotry, our social antipathies, and our industrial advantages, we shall have a morale which for peace or for war will be wholly sufficient._

Must our ambition be to teach American children that American ways are the best, and that these ways ought to be established in the world?

There is both an evil and a good, both an absurdity and a sublime loyalty in the view which all nations have, that their own culture and life are the best. This conceit is in part a product of isolation, and is pure provincialism. But it is also of the very essence of the reality feeling and the sense of solidarity of peoples and of their loyalty to country. It must not be dealt with too ruthlessly. There is a primitive stratum of it that must remain in all peoples. Nations, however benighted, will not be dispossessed of this idea, but experience and education will make nations more discriminating so that they can at least see what is essential and what is superficial in their own characteristics. Certainly whatever is ethical in our foundations we, and all other peoples, will be expected to hold to. We feel it a duty to spread our moral truth abroad and our mores are necessarily right for us, and this idea of rightness of mores must imply a desire to make them prevail in the world. We may recognize, abstractly, other standards of conduct, but there is something in moral belief which, of course, cannot voluntarily be changed, and which must stand for the ultimately real in consciousness so long as it is held to be so by the ma.s.s of the people. This must extend also to aesthetic standards, and to all final judgments of values to some extent.

For these reasons we must suppose that the spirit of compet.i.tion among nations, certainly so far as it concerns the ambition for empires of the spirit, must remain. Belief on the part of a people in the superiority of their own culture cannot and should not be eliminated.

By this spirit the good, we may be sure, will prevail, but prevail only through opposition and compet.i.tion. There can be no real compromise in the field of these moral possessions and appreciations.

_We_ must be Americans, and react with American ideas. True nationalists everywhere appear to recognize and to be guided by this truth. We cannot voluntarily lay aside our own beliefs nor help believing they are right, although we may see that were we differently situated we might change them.

There are three things at least, as regards our mores that cannot be accomplished. For this we may take our evidence and our warning from Germany. Culture cannot be spread by force, since force does not conquer spirit. Devotion to the basic principles of one's civilization cannot rationally nor safely be extended to include all customs and manners, so that we may a.s.sume that there is a right way in everything which is ours and a wrong way which is foreign. The mores of a people cannot be changed or manipulated by education and propaganda without uprooting the moral structures of society. When we begin to practice a Social-politik we enter upon dangerous ground.

Are we not, then, to take the att.i.tude in education that _our culture is an experimental culture and represents an experimental civilization_? Although for us our ways and beliefs are final criteria of values in conduct, and we cannot hope or wish to free ourselves from them or to be guided by objective data, still we put them forward in the spirit of the enquirer, rather than as eternal principles. If this be right, we are not to guard our civilization jealously, hedge it about with national jealousy and bigotry but rather send our culture abroad on a mission. We are to understand and to teach the culture of every other nation sympathetically, trusting to our own foundations to hold firm. We must be so fortified in our own virtue that we shall not be afraid to send our spirit abroad to compete with whatever it shall meet in the old world or the new. This impulse to extend one's culture and philosophy is a deep one, and we believe it to be well-grounded. It has been said that the deepest impulse of British imperialism has been to extend English ways of thought throughout the world. There is truth in this. We may conclude also that unless a nation can feel sincerely that it is founded upon something that ought to endure and at least to have an opportunity to become universal, it lacks a growth principle and its civilization is not very secure. Certainly it lacks a great pedagogical advantage in all the internal work of education.

The work of the intellectual leaders of a people is to uncover this kernel of sincere belief and worth, and strip nationalism at the same time of its encrustations of vanity and deception. There are, we may suppose, at the bottom of every nation's consciousness such sincere principles which are ent.i.tled to a fair field in the compet.i.tion of the civilizations and the cultures of the world. We may be sure that there is Americanism that needs to be taught both for the sake of the world and for our own sake; something which const.i.tutes our best contribution to an experimental world in which the over-emphasis of all sincere principles can ultimately do no harm. Americanism, with all the errors it may contain, and all the limitations it may have as a universal principle is better for us and for all, we may believe, than any dispa.s.sionate and well considered intellectualism, or a cosmopolitanism that is based upon a fear of provincialism. Let us be prepared, therefore, to go forth not to conquer but to partic.i.p.ate in the life of the world.