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
wholly sufficient._
Must our ambition be to teach American children that American ways are
the best, and that these ways ought to be established in the world?
There is both an evil and a good, both an absurdity and a sublime
loyalty in the view which all nations have, that their own culture and
life are the best. This conceit is in part a product of isolation, and
is pure provincialism. But it is also of the very essence of the
reality feeling and the sense of solidarity of peoples and of their
loyalty to country. It must not be dealt with too ruthlessly. There is
a primitive stratum of it that must remain in all peoples. Nations,
however benighted, will not be dispossessed of this idea, but
experience and education will make nations more discriminating so that
they can at least see what is essential and what is superficial in
their own characteristics. Certainly whatever is ethical in our
foundations we, and all other peoples, will be expected to hold to. We
feel it a duty to spread our moral truth abroad and our mores are
necessarily right for us, and this idea of rightness of mores must
imply a desire to make them prevail in the world. We may recognize,
abstractly, other standards of conduct, but there is something in
moral belief which, of course, cannot voluntarily be changed, and
which must stand for the ultimately real in consciousness so long as
it is held to be so by the mass of the people. This must extend also
to aesthetic standards, and to all final judgments of values to some
extent.
For these reasons we must suppose that the spirit of competition among
nations, certainly so far as it concerns the ambition for empires of
the spirit, must remain. Belief on the part of a people in the
superiority of their own culture cannot and should not be eliminated.
By this spirit the good, we may be sure, will prevail, but prevail
only through opposition and competition. There can be no real
compromise in the field of these moral possessions and appreciations.
_We_ must be Americans, and react with American ideas. True
nationalists everywhere appear to recognize and to be guided by this
truth. We cannot voluntarily lay aside our own beliefs nor help
believing they are right, although we may see that were we differently
situated we might change them.
There are three things at least, as regards our mores that cannot be
accomplished. For this we may take our evidence and our warning from
Germany. Culture cannot be spread by force, since force does not
conquer spirit. Devotion to the basic principles of one's civilization
cannot rationally nor safely be extended to include all customs and
manners, so that we may assume that there is a right way in everything
which is ours and a wrong way which is foreign. The mores of a people
cannot be changed or manipulated by education and propaganda without
uprooting the moral structures of society. When we begin to practice a
Social-politik we enter upon dangerous ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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