“To what did this immoderate love of country lead? To a passion for aggrandizement at the expense of others, and what was this but selfishness with a gloss so bright as to make it look like a virtue? It led to the strangling of conscience in national affairs, so as to make wrong seem right, and, more than that, to persistence in a course when it was well known to be wrong. It taught false ideas of honor and made the world one grand dueling field, where the energy of nations was spent in watching for insults from their neighbors, and where the quick blow followed every real or fancied offense. “Do not imagine, by what I have said, that I would have advised these people to love their country less. On the contrary, I should tell them to love it so much that they could not see it do wrong; to love it so much that they should have no room in their hearts for bitterness toward others; so much that they should strive to have it lead the world in a march toward universal brotherhood. Love for one’s neighbor should not stop at state or national boundaries. Love should know neither caste nor country, but should take in the world, and, I might add for your benefit, other worlds if necessary. Love is a condition of the heart, something within, not without, the man, and when fully developed reaches out to everything that God has made.” “It seems to me, Thorwald,” I ventured to say, “that these sentiments, which I can see are admirable, belong to your present high development, while we of the earth have reached only about the condition of the people whose traits you have been describing.”