“And who are they who best may claim our trust? Surely our own people, of whose blood we are; Who from our infancy have proved their love, And never have deceived us, save, perchance, When kindly guile was wholesomer for us Than truth itself.”[61] The loyalty to national customs stiffens patriotism, and because of that is, from the standpoint of the patriot, highly desirable, but the problem that it sets is that of preventing it from being satisfied to remain a mere unreasoning superstition. The mores get embodied in character, and come to be a veritable _spirit_ of loyalty. They grow out of the life of the people, and return to that life. They become actually constituent in personality. The mores become a part of ourselves; we not only think of them, we think with them. They are so natural that we do not notice them. “The more thoroughly American a man is, the less he can perceive Americanism. He will embody it; all he does, says, or writes will be full of it; but he can never truly see it, simply because he has no exterior point of view from which to look at it.”[62] Under such conditions, how could one help being patriotic? It is not something that he strives after; it is to be what he cannot help being. He is patriotic simply because he is himself. Some conclusions from the study of the habits of patriotism may now be drawn. The complexity of patriotism has further manifested itself. And it is evident that the habits of patriotism, like the impulses, may be either good or bad, or so far as the motive of the individual is concerned, ethically colorless. The patriotism of habituation is natural, like breathing. The habituated patriot will go with the group, and groups like individuals sometimes fall into bad habits. But groups also acquire good habits, and will in those matters be worth serving. Habituation and conformity in such a case will be valuable. Their weakening would often be really disastrous. “There are cases in which the discrediting of tradition is like picking out the mortar that holds together the fabric of society.”[63] There are times when the discrediting of patriotism would mean the destruction of the nation.