It is important to notice also that, just as the minor group sentiments are not incompatible with, but rather may strengthen, the national sentiment, when subordinated to and incorporated in it, so the national sentiment is not incompatible with still more widely inclusive group sentiments—for example, that for a European system of nations, for the ‘League of Nations’ or for Western Civilisation in general. And, while loyalty to humanity as a whole is a noble ideal, it is one which can only be realized through a further step of that process of extension of the object of the group sentiment, of which extension patriotism itself is the culmination at present for the great mass of civilised mankind. The attempt to achieve it by any other road is bound to fail because psychologically unsound[97]. Let us note in passing that neglect of this truth gives rise to two of the extreme forms of political doctrine or ideal, current at the present day; first, the ideal of the brotherhood of man in a nationless world; secondly, the extreme form of democratic individualism which assumes that the good of society is best promoted by the freest possible pursuit by individuals of their private ends, which believes that each man must have an equal voice in the government of his country, because that is the only way in which his interests and those of his class can be protected and forwarded; a doctrine which regards public life as a mere strife of private and class interests. Both ideals fly in the face of psychological facts; and, though they are in appearance extreme opposites, they are apt to be found associated in the same minds. At the other end of the scale, we have the philosophical conservatism of such a thinker as Edmund Burke, which is keenly aware of the organic unity of society and looks constantly to the good of the whole, deriving from that consideration its leading motives and principles, and which trusts principally to the growth of the group spirit for the holding of the balance between conflicting interests and for the promotion of the public welfare. Having seen the importance for national life of the idea of the nation, the diffusion of which through the minds of the people constitutes national self-consciousness, let us glance for a moment at the way other ideas may play leading rôles in national life. Such are ideas which became national ideals, that is to say, ideas of some end to be realised by the nation which became widely entertained and the objects of strong sentiments and of collective emotion and desire and which, therefore, determine collective action. I shall not attempt to deal separately with various classes of such ideas, or ideals—the political, the religious, the economic; but shall only note the fact that they have played and may yet play great parts in the history of the world.