The Psychology of Nations: A Contribution to the Philosophy of HistoryPartridge, G. E. (George Everett)
Philosophy
The Psychology of Nations: A Contribution to the Philosophy of History
Partridge, G. E. (George Everett)
Education; History -- Philosophy; War
deeply impressed and influenced by music, and unified and imbued with
the feeling of personal possession by the story of country that is the
core of patriotic feeling. It is the function of art, especially of
music, to help to make the home feeling of the child normal and
enthusiastic--to raise it above the stage of being an "anxiety of
animal life," as Nicolai terms the primitive love of home. Art must
help to remove the fears and depressions that may lurk in the idea of
home, which are great obstacles to the development of the higher
devotions. It is the lack of normal love of home in the city, we
should say, that makes socialism and all forms of internationalism
that breed so rapidly there such dangerous moods in a democracy.
Without true home love, we may conclude, the wider loyalties can never
be quite wholesome, although they may be intense and fanatical.
The second element in patriotism we identify as the love of, or
loyalty to, the sum of the customs, beliefs, and standards that make
up the _mores_ of a people. A peculiarly perplexing educational
problem arises, since there are two opposite evils to be avoided We
may too readily cultivate a spirit which either takes the form of a
narcissistic love of one's own ways, or which, extraverted, so to
speak, becomes a fanatical ambition to impose one's own culture upon
the world; or, on the other hand we might become too self-critical,
too cosmopolitan, and too receptive toward all foreign culture.
National conceit, complacency and destinism face us in one direction,
the danger of losing our identity and our individuality and our
mission in the other. These problems of course confront all nations;
they are especially urgent in America, because of the composite nature
of our national life and the rapid changes that take place in it, and
also because of the ideal nature of the bond that holds us together.
We are still a somewhat inchoate and flowing mass of social elements,
imperfectly cooerdinated, manifestly, yet deeply united by ideals which
appeal to very deep emotions. Our work is to maintain social
solidarity, preserve and educate certain fundamental qualities of our
national life which are our real claims to individuality as a people.
These essential traits, perhaps because of our newness as a form of
civilization, appear to be less clearly defined, less definitely
represented in institutions, and to be more abstract than the
qualities that make up the essential character of other peoples.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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