USURY. A REPLY AND A REJOINDER.
(Contemporary Review, February 1880.)
USURY. A PREFACE.
(Pamphlet, 1885.)
HOME, AND ITS ECONOMIES.[111]
131. In the March number of the Contemporary Review appeared two papers,[112] by writers of reputation, which I cannot but hope their authors will perceive upon reflection to have involved errors only the more grave in that they have become, of late, in the minds of nearly all public men, facile and familiar. I have, therefore, requested the editor's permission to offer some reply to both of these essays, their subjects being intimately connected.
The first of which I speak was Mr. Herbert Spencer's, which appeared under the title of "The Bias of Patriotism." But the real subject of the paper (discussed in its special extent, with singular care and equity) was only the bias of National vanity; and the debate was opened by this very curious sentence,—"Patriotism is nationally, that which Egoism is individually."
Mr. Spencer would not, I think, himself accept this statement, if put into the clear form, "What is Egoism in one man, is Patriotism in two or more, and the vice of an individual, the virtue of a multitude."[113] But it is strange,—however strictly Mr. Spencer may of late have confined his attention to metaphysical or scientific subjects, disregarding the language of historical or imaginative literature—it is strange, I repeat, that so careful a student should be unaware that the term "patriotism" cannot, in classical usage, be extended to the action of a multitude. No writer of authority ever speaks of a nation as having felt, or acted, patriotically. Patriotism is, by definition, a virtue of individuals; and so far from being in those individuals a mode of egoism, it is precisely in the sacrifice of their egoism that it consists. It is the temper of mind which determines them to defer their own interests to those of their country.
132. Supposing it possible for any parallel sentiment to animate a nation as one body, it could have reference only to the position it held among other families of the world. The name of the emotion would then be properly "Cosmism," and would signify the resolution of such a people to sacrifice its own special interests to those of Mankind. Cosmism hitherto has indeed generally asserted itself only in the desire of the Cosmic nation that all others should adopt its theological opinions, and permit it to adopt their personal property; but Patriotism has truly existed, and even as a dominant feeling, in the minds of many persons who have been greatly influential on the fates of their races, and that one of our leading philosophers should be unconscious of the nature of this sentiment, and ignorant of its political power, is to be noted as painfully characteristic of the present state of England itself.