[135]Loyalty to a particular unit with a well defined function in no way collides with allegiance to other bodies with quite other outlooks.... Men may still remain good national patriots while loyally accepting the controls exercised by world standards in science, art or music. [136]Both race and nation must be preserved because they have certain permanent and necessary functions, and because they are the natural centers of that loyalty which can never be swallowed up in world-loyalty, since human nature cannot live wholly in universals.... Between these two sets of loyalties there is a clear distinction; the one is local and particularistic, the other is human. A well-rounded social organization, whether within the single group or between groups, will give practical scope to each.... In a practical way men must recognize that since they have multiple interests, they may have multiple allegiances.

To return to Miller for another phrase:

[137]The nation is a growth from innumerable simpler social forms, and the growth to internationalism is relatively little more complex than the growth of nationalism. [138]The old patriotism means stultification; an adaptation of loyalty to meet actual present conditions means enlargement of character and the possibility of a new world.

There is no beginning and no end to the growth and the organization of the mind. Beginning with the individual and the family, we may analyze the elements which enter into these elementary mental units, or we may observe the mounting synthesis to the city, state and nation; or, following other lines of interest and of affiliation, to the movements of world culture, religion and economic organization, in their world-wide bearing. The nation is formed by a synthesis of its sub-groups; and the nation, in turn, enters into a wider synthesis to form the nascent but still growing conception of mankind. The mind of the many groups of Americans yield up their purposes, when called upon, for the greater unity—greater not only in size, but in richness, variety and tradition—that constitutes the mind of America. The future will mark the growing unity in diversity of the American group mind; the mounting beauty of its many-colored canvas, the increasing harmony of its many-throated symphony. At the same time, America will become more and more a part of a still greater synthesis, the group mind that will transcend the selfish purpose of the nation in such common purposes as the struggle against the adverse forces of nature; the organization of men for welfare and for culture; the prevention of that ancient group intolerance, which means the destruction of many small groups and the standardization and impoverishment of many great ones. The fulfillment of the prophet’s vision will be at hand when groups of men will not strive to destroy each other but to fulfill each other, when the sub-group will not undermine but serve the greater unity, when the ultimate vision of every struggling group of men, be it small or great, will be to serve the purpose of the whole, to enter into the mind of humanity, the ideal of God.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Footnotes.

[1] American Jewish Yearbook, volume 24, page 343.

[2] Yearbook, Vol. 22, pages 410–11.

[3] Social Discovery, p. 21.