These things, then, imply a common consciousness. This consciousness is a recognition and ratification of existing interrelationships, and such a community of thought and feeling and will is fundamentally important in the unity of a nation. “No mere interaction will constitute a social relation. Nor yet an interaction of otherwise self-conscious agents. Not merely must each agent know himself, he must know the others.... Unless there be on both sides a perfect consciousness of self and of other, and of the relations of self and other—in a word, perfect mutual understanding—there will be, so far, no completely social relation. A social relation is a self-conscious relation.... In other words, society is constituted by mutual understanding.”[178] This understanding is that which enables the group to act as one. “Through this mutual knowledge the group, like the individual, is enabled to assert itself as an independent force.”[179] Mazzini understood that the unity of a country rested upon a sense of oneness in the minds of the people: “Country is not a mere zone of territory. The true country is the Idea to which it gives birth; it is the thought of love, the sense of communion which unites in one all the sons of that territory.”[180] Here we get a suggestion regarding the unity of Switzerland. It is, in large part, a unity in idea. That is not saying that it has no objective basis. The Swiss have a common land and other bonds of oneness. But the strongest bond seems to be that of a conception of common welfare. The unity of Switzerland has, of course, been stimulated from without. One of the most potent reasons for Swiss unity is that of necessity for defence. They must be one to preserve their freedom. But the fact is that whatever the stimulus was, whatever the difficulties that stood in the way, however diverse the original materials may have been, the Swiss are now one in the beliefs of the individual members of the nation, and that feeling of communion is actually unity in fact.
It is true, then, that in one way the essence of an institution is in idea. “Perhaps the Identical, in this matter of groups, is neither a real person nor a nominalist fiction. Let us call it an idea....”[181] All true unity is really contributed by the mind. The external falls apart, and becomes a mere congeries and not a unity when not held together in idea. The external elements form the materials for a unity; they make up the basis of an institution; they aid in giving rise to a common consciousness; but it is the common consciousness itself that is the essence of the unity. In this way the will to individuality as an inner fact will in turn make for individuality in objective reality. Only, it should be noted on the other hand, when the unity is based on external grounds, it is not a mere fiction, and is not left up in the air.
To have a common consciousness, the individuals of a group do not have to be acquainted by sense experience with all their land or its people. Imagination and sympathy are means by which men feel themselves one of a society and parts of an institution. And if, even after imagination and sympathy have come to one’s help, a country and its ideals are said to be abstract and vague, even so, it is such abstract things that become a cause, and it is such vague ideals that have the greatest motive power. They possess us. We think with them rather than of them, and they become a spirit in which we approach all things. It is not necessary that we should have an exact formula of them in order to make them real. Realities do not only then come to exist when we have a clear-cut formula for them, nor do ideas first have being when they are put into formal expression.
One quest of men has been, consciously or unconsciously, to create for themselves a unified world. In doing this they have, among other things, formed themselves into nations. Nations have met their needs, and helped them to feel at home in their world. Countries are real, and come close home. With this in mind we can appreciate the feeling of the traveler abroad who has a sense of the wholeness of his home-land and longs for it. The following quotation is an illustration of this feeling at the same time that it catalogues some of the elements that go into the makeup of a country. “Every time his passport is presented, every time he enters a new dominion or crosses a new frontier, every time he is delayed at the custom-house, or questioned by a policeman, or challenged by a sentinel, every time he is perplexed by a new language, or puzzled by a new variety of coinage or currency,—he thanks his God with fresh fervency that through all the length and breadth of that land, beyond the swelling floods, which he is privileged and proud to call his own land, there is a common language, a common currency, a common Constitution, common laws and liberties, a common inheritance of glory from the past, and, if it be only true to itself, a common destiny of glory for the future!”[182]
Is there anything to indicate that the organizing principles of a nation are permanently necessary ones? The ultimate existence and value of patriotism will be involved in the answer to that question. Is patriotism called for by the fundamental order of reality?
One of the essential centers of life is a community, a neighborhood, those who live near enough to one another that the interests of their lives are closely interwoven by the fact of association in space. This would seem to be a self-evident proposition. Mazzini hit the truth when he said that mankind had been placed in groups or nuclei upon the face of the earth. The community is an irreducible minimum of association among mankind. It is a permanent association, and the sentiments that grow out of it will be permanent. There is true reason why one of the fundamental virtues is that of being a good neighbor. And Veblen was right in saying, “Even with no patriotism, love of country, and use and wont as it runs in one’s home area and among one’s own people, would not pass.”[183] Patriotism seems to be vitally connected with a permanent sentiment, community spirit.
A community is attached to the soil. It has its basis in a local area. That is what makes a community. In other words, it is organized upon the geographical principle. The geographical principle is one of the permanently necessary principles of human association. Now a nation is so associated. A country must have a territory, and it is the only institution of which this can be said. “A nation ... is primarily a group of men and women related physically.... The state represents not the common interests of those who are intellectual, or musical, or religious, but chiefly the common interest of those who live in the same district.”[184] Patriotism is loyalty to one’s native land. At least one fundamental principle of a country is a permanent one, the geographical principle. We have here a suggestion as to why the soil is so important in patriotism. Patriotism is nourished by the soil. The soil not only is what sustains the vital economic interests of those who live upon it, but is the basis of the existence of the nation itself. Without the land, and land is country, there would be no patriotism.
There has arisen of late the contention that it would be better to do away with the geographical principle of government. Russell says, “There is no reason why all governmental units should be geographical.”[185] It is felt that if geographical frontiers were destroyed the cause of peace would be furthered. “When civil war breaks out in a country, no real fighting is possible until the contending factions are organized on separate territory.”[186] It is worse when trouble with another country arises. “In domestic affairs we live with and know the men who disagree with us; in foreign affairs the opposition lives behind a frontier, and probably speaks a different language.”[187] But it is not clear that we shall gain anything by heeding these suggestions to obliterate national frontiers. The substitute planned is that of syndicalistic organizations. But under such an arrangement frontiers would be infinitely multiplied. Men of conflicting loyalties and interests would be in touch everywhere. It would simply be an exchange of one antagonism for another. And class wars would be no better than nationalistic wars. It would be no better to have class against class than nation against nation. So what we come back to is governmental organization upon the geographical principle. And this means that we come back to some such unit as the nation. And why not? Environment makes people alike, and to have a homogeneous people is one of the necessities of a successful government. Moreover, we must form an attachment somewhere, else live entirely alone. And it is right to begin where we are.
“God gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all.”
We have said that the territorial arrangement is an inescapable one in government, and that the community is a unit below which we cannot go. But there cannot help but be interests growing up between communities. And historically these interests have led to association of communities. Rivalry and friction arise. War follows. The mediæval city-states fought with one another. New York and New Jersey are rivals; the writer recalls one occasion when New Jersey was threatening suit against New York for befouling the Hudson River. The only safeguard against internecine warfare between communities is a more comprehensive power. So a larger unit grows. And these units must be still further integrated. The process will not stop until it comes to the nation with its government, the state. How much further it will go will be disclosed by future events.