To be a true individual is to have some significance of one’s own. Individuality comes to mean marked individuality. It stands for the opposite of the quality of being common. The phrase “have some individuality” often means to have something for which one stands, and something that is really significant in the world. It means that one’s activities should be the expression of a life plan which is his, and which has real value. This characteristic takes a step beyond those of mere separateness and independence. When we say of one that he has no individuality, we do not mean that he is not numerically separate from other men, but, in part at least, that he has no life plan which is specially his own. He has no significance. The man who is an individual is one who has a specific character. And if he prides himself upon being an individual he wants to “be somebody.” He has “self-respect.” He regards himself as significant. He wants not only to count as one; he wants to count.
And, again, this is a characteristic of patriotism. Patriotism is a will to be nationally significant. It is national pride. It is national ambition, a will to self-respect and the respect of others, a will to national standing, greatness, distinction, importance, power. The existence of this will to be significant is why nations are so sensitive on points of honor and prestige. Their national significance is lowered if they allow, let us say, a public insult to go unavenged. It is a reason why nations cannot back down in a war when it once gets started, and why they can all be for peace after the war, but not while it is being waged. National significance, as national significance now goes, will not permit them to do other than win the war. This is why states like to regard themselves as “powers,” for it is as a “power” that a nation finds itself significant in world politics. It is why countries fight for their “civilization.” The predominance of their civilization means the fulfillment of their desire for national significance. It is why the knowledge of the history and literature of one’s country is likely to produce patriotism; such knowledge creates both a conviction of the country’s significance and the desire to realize it further.
The grounds upon which a country asserts its significance is an important matter. As long as military prowess and possession of much territory are esteemed to be things of great importance, the nations will strive to be significant by being distinguished for those things. If the ideals of mankind can be more largely turned to constructive activities, the nations will strive to be significant along those lines. There are patriots whose ideals are of the latter type. They seek the internal development of their country as a means of making it more worth while and hence more significant. The significance that they seek is not merely that which glories in the admiration and perhaps envy of the world; it is not a significance adjudged by a jury of mankind, but one that they themselves find in making their country approximate an ideal. Patriotism is the will to be nationally significant; another main characteristic of the will to individuality is what is working in important manifestations of patriotism.
An individual, at least a finite individual, is one of a community. And its individuality, therefore, rests upon a “broad basis of likeness.”[154] The conscious individual, for instance, does not strive to make his individuality consist in absolute difference. He wants to be different only within certain limits. He does not want to be “outlandish.” He wants in certain broad ways to be like his fellows. He would, if it were called to his attention, agree that his individuality rested in great measure upon membership in his community.
It is impossible for one to avoid seeing the fact that he is one in a world with others. The human individual is a social animal.[155] And this fact is formulative of his very individuality. Fite says, “Not only does ... intercourse with others broaden the range of your self-consciousness; it also furnishes the basis of contrast through which you become aware of yourself, and define yourself, and are enabled to assert yourself as a distinct and unique individual.”[156] Two points are involved in what Fite says. First, we become self-conscious in contrast with others; we know ourselves in that way. Second, our own individuality becomes richer because others exist. What they have become broadens one’s own vision of the range of human possibilities by so much the more; and that broader vision enriches and enlarges one’s own life. One will, then, find his life expanded by the multiplication of his social relations. “If our argument has shown anything, it has shown that through the extension of his social relations, the individual becomes, not less, but more of an individual, and acquires a greater individual freedom.”[157] The high integration of society is not necessarily inimical to the development of the individual. The fact is that as society has been builded into larger wholes, the individual has also become more and more significant. Royce says, “... our time shows us that individualism and collectivism are tendencies, each of which, as our social order grows, intensifies the other.”[158] And Royce draws this conclusion: “No individual human self can be saved except through the ceasing to be a mere individual.”[159]
The existence of others has important consequences for one’s practical attitude toward life. When one becomes aware of such existence he can no longer act as if it were not. “When I have perceived even a chair standing in my way I can no longer proceed as if it were not there.”[160] And one’s conduct will usually be more radically changed when it is human individuals that are in the way. The same knowledge which shows one himself shows him also other human beings who are just as real and important as himself, and upon the basis of that knowledge he can logically and ethically find no good reason for treating them merely as means for the furtherance of his own interests. He cannot simply walk over them as if they were not there. But if one is even wise, he will adopt no such ruthless plan of life. He will realize that consideration for others is best for himself. He will not only have less trouble, but he will also find his individuality enriched by his intercourse with other free beings who have their own meaning. One cannot be a positive reality unless his neighbors are also. And if these things are true, it means that the interests of the individuals of a community may be harmonized. When each one understands his own true nature, he at the same time realizes that his own good is best found in harmony with the others of his community. Individualism, rightly interpreted, attains the results desired by those who place the emphasis upon collectivism. Howison says: “The very quality of personality is, that a person is a being who recognizes others as having a reality as unquestionable as his own, and who thus sees himself as a member of a moral republic, standing to other persons in an immutable relationship of reciprocal duties and rights, himself endowed with dignity, and acknowledging the dignity of all the rest.”[161] This is an ideal of individuality as it appears in persons. The enlightened individual is really concerned about finding his proper place in his world.
Does patriotism recognize that individuality involves membership in a community? Does the patriot actually wish to realize the individuality of his country in that way? The answer is that he often does. There are patriots who have their hearts in the desire that their country be a good neighbor. This desire is, of course, not always present in the patriotic state of mind. But neither are the other characteristics of individuality always invariably present. Some of them are always present, and together they make up the will to individuality which is the essence of patriotism. It must be admitted that only too often does the patriot think of the individuality of his country as realized apart from or at the expense of others. The more generous notion of patriotism is still as much a problem as a fact. And yet, in times of peace at least, the patriot sees the good of countries other than his own. It is a defensible proposition that even the common man is capable of and actually does possess such vision. Certainly there are examples of illustrious patriots in whom it is found. The following has been penned concerning Professor Royce: “... his ethical idealism is best understood as an interpretation of the spirit of modern civilization as it had found expression in his native land. Not that there was anything of the Chauvinist in Royce. If there were aught of value in our social and political ideals it was due to the fact that they rested on principles that cross the boundaries between nations, and might equally serve as the basis of that community of nations to which he hopefully looked forward.”[162] But one can also place in evidence the very words of one of the greatest patriots of all time, Joseph Mazzini. Mazzini was devoted to the ideal of serving humanity. He wrote to the laboring people of his country: “Your first duties—first as regards importance—are, as I have already told you, towards Humanity. You are men before you are either citizens or fathers.”[163] But he was also an ardent patriot. He was devoted to Italy, to her freedom, unity, and significance. And he thought that Italians, like all other men, could serve humanity effectively only by being in association. “This means [of effective association],” he says, “was provided for you by God when he gave you a country; when, as a wise overseer of labor distributes the various branches of employment according to the different capacities of the workman, he divided Humanity into distinct groups or nuclei upon the face of the earth, thus creating the germ of Nationalities.”[164] The duty of a nation was to be the servant of humanity, but that was also its glory and its right to be. Patriotism and internationalism were complementary. “In labouring for our own country on the right principle, we labour for Humanity. Our country is the fulcrum of the lever we have to wield for the common good. If we abandon that fulcrum, we run the risk of rendering ourselves useless not only to humanity, but to our country itself. Before men can associate with the nations of which humanity is composed, they must have a National existence. There is no true association except among equals. 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. This last phase is an altruistic form of the will.
The concept of the will to national individuality, derived from the popular definition of patriotism as the love of country and wrought out in the light of the data which clusters about that popular idea, proves to be a seminal principle. If one follows out the various forms of the will, he comes to the main forms of patriotism. He could, by a knowledge of the characteristics of the will to individuality, foretell in general what the manifestations of patriotism would be found to be.
CHAPTER IX
The Nation As an Individual
Patriotism is the will to national individuality. What justification for its existence is there in the groundwork of fact? Is there really any individuality for the will to rest itself upon? Is the country an individual?