And now, the fact that patriotism is a will toward the country as it is in and for itself may be expressed in another way by saying that the patriot has a will toward the country as an individual, and his will as to its selfhood is a will toward its individuality. A self is an individual considered as an identity. The country has an individual place in the patriot’s heart; and he desires a singleness of the country corresponding to his singleness of affection. Love of country has done what all love does; it has individualized its object. It makes its object the one, the individual, of its devotion. It is with country as with woman. A man can love but one.[144] It is the one to him. And he wants it to be the one among all others. What it means to him he wants it to be objectively. And so patriotism may be described as the will to national individuality. It is individualism expressed upon the national plane. One can see what it is when he observes the reaction of patriots to any suggestion touching the identity of their country. Opposition to the proposal for a league of nations is patriotism. It is narrow, perhaps, but nevertheless patriotism it is. Those who oppose the idea are actuated by the fear that loyalty to the league will develop at the expense of loyalty to the nation. The patriot feels for his country, puts himself in its place, and cannot bear to see its selfhood or individuality impaired. It should be noted that the will to individuality may exist in strong measure when the external basis for it seems to be weak, and _vice versa_. Switzerland has an active patriotism with a heterogeneous people, while Sweden has a weaker patriotism with a homogeneous people. However, this merely amounts to saying that patriotism is sometimes weak and sometimes strong. The nature of patriotism remains the same. There is simply a stronger set of stimuli urging it to express itself in the one case than in the other. And the fact of individuality is not exclusively the stimulus to the will to it. There might be a will to an individuality which as yet existed only in ideal, and there can be a real individuality which leads only to a very weak fervor for itself. In the case of Switzerland and Sweden, the explanation is that the Swiss have had to fight for their identity much more than the Swedish. There must, however, be an actual individuality at least possible in order to justify the will. What we are at present concerned with is the description of patriotism as a sentiment. Where there is patriotism it is such as described, whatever the stimuli may be. National individuality is what the Swiss aim at. The next chapter will take up the question of whether or not patriotism finds a real individuality to rest itself upon. An integrating spectroscope is a spectroscope the slit of which is illuminated by light from every part of the source under examination; this concept of the will to national individuality