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
The democracy, of course, can harbor no such conception of State.
Loyalty, in the democracy, must be to state and to statesmen rather as
leaders of the people. The first and most necessary factor in
patriotism as loyalty to authority is that authority _must_ represent
interests of country and people and must for that reason deserve
loyalty. Educationally, the problem is quite the reverse of the
educational problem of the autocracy. The people are not to be trained
in obedience and subservience to the state, but we have mainly to
create in the minds of all people the capacity to recognize true
leaders. It is not loyalty to authority as such, we say, that is
wanted, but loyalty to leader _who has no power at all except the
power of the good and its forceful presentation_. A democracy is a
society in which the aristocrats rule by persuasion, although we must
think of this aristocracy as an aristocracy of intellect and morality
rather than of birth and wealth. The ideal, we suppose, toward which
our definition of democracy leads is a state in which authority as
represented in the institutions of government, and leadership
represented in natural superiority coincide. It is a State in which
the good and the great shall govern. But in general, parliaments
cannot now be the sources of moral and intellectual leadership of the
people. They are subjected to too many conflicting interests. The time
may come, we say, when authority and superiority will coincide, when
laws will be made and executed by those who ought to do these things
rather than by those who merely have the power to gain opportunity to
do so. At any time and place we _may_, of course, behold great
leadership combined with great authority. A true democracy is a state
in which such coincidence will be inevitable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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