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
Many authors have commented upon the entire inability of nations to
understand one another. There is a deep reason for this, which we have
already suggested. They do not wish to understand one another. It is a
part of the archaic system of defense to maintain an attitude of
distrust and misunderstanding and even fear. The fear of the enemy is
a protection--against invasion from without and disruption within.
Nations do not dare to relinquish their fear of one another, and we
see something of this voluntary cherishing of fear and enmity in the
present hesitation about entering into leagues on the part of many
nations. Nations really wish to hate one another, it would seem. Other
evidence of this we have observed in the cult of hate that has been
promulgated to keep up morale in the recent war. We see enmity
maintained when the differences among the peoples holding it are
superficial and must indeed be exaggerated and caricatured in order to
make them support feelings of dislike. Small differences in the
customs of closely related peoples are sufficient sometimes to
maintain intense antagonism. As Collier (68) says, it is precisely the
bad manners of a people that cause conflict. These bad manners are of
course manners that are _different from our own_.
Germany's outburst of hatred and its frequent exhibition during the
war and its promulgation as a cult and a religion appear to have
excited the interest of many writers on the war. As a chapter in the
psychology of war it has suggested new problems and points of view,
and it has also appealed to many as an interesting problem of national
psychology. If our explanation of hatred as especially related to fear
and to the sense of inferiority is correct Germany of all nations must
have been affected with a disorder of morale, or some perversion of
national consciousness.
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