CHAPTER IIThe Impulses of Antipathy
The impulses of antipathy have played an important role in the development of patriotism. When one becomes aware of the existence of other peoples unlike himself, the sense of difference which arises is liable to take on the character of a strong and active aversion to and depreciation of them. Nothing is more common than the feeling that one’s own people is a kind of chosen race, and that all other races are inferior. A speaker who had lived many years among the Navajo Indians once said that they regarded and called themselves “The People.” They were at the top of mankind; the Mexicans ranked next to them; the Americans came third and last. This was their arrangement of all the peoples that they knew. The same attitude appears in civilized man. He is characterized by self-satisfaction, and the peculiarities of others, even of dialect and pronunciation, are enough to call forth contempt and ridicule. It follows that strangers can easily be enemies. In Latin, the wordhostiswhich at first meant simplystrangerorforeignercame later to meanenemy. The words of Loisy are again appropriate: “In the lower stages of human evolution, a foreigner is not far from being an enemy, if he be not one actually. In the higher stages of our evolution, among people who think they are really civilized, he still seems in practice to be of another species, because he has a different mentality, and unusual ways. Each separate human group has thus a fashion of collective egoism, whence comes self-satisfaction, a pride which may possess dignity, which may be a power, but which also may become a source of blindness and wickedness.”[19]This antipathy to foreigners has been strong even when other forces appeared to be in the ascendancy. Such was the case, for instance, when religion seemed to have the center of the stage; nationalistic jealousy was a factor in the movements which centered about Wiclif, Huss, Luther, Henry VIII, and John Knox. These men could all count upon antipathy to foreigners. And the same antipathy shows itself today in the fact that the peoples of different nations not only hate the enemy, but also show a lack of solicitude about their allies. In the outcry for increased production in the spring of 1917, some individuals expressed themselves as being ready to plant for American consumption, but unwilling that any of the products should go toforeigners. And the “foreigners” that were in mind in some instances were the Canadians, our next-door neighbors. It may be added, however, that it does not seem as if there is in race hatred any insurmountable obstacles to overcoming it. Races which are thrown into contact become accustomed to one another, and are able to live in harmony.
The form assumed by the general impulse of aversion or antipathy may be either defensive or aggressive, and may tend toward either self-preservation or self-assertion. There are nations which of their own motion will not be warlike, but in which the warlike temper will flare up when they are once attacked. In such nations patriotism has been associated with the fight for freedom. Sometimes it seems as if the definition of the patriot was that he was one who defended his country’s liberty. This love of freedom is featured in American expressions of patriotism. A verse from “Hail, Columbia,” will serve as an example:
“Immortal patriots! rise once more:Defend your rights, defend your shore:Let no rude foe with impious handLet no rude foe with impious handInvade the shrine where sacred liesOf toil and blood the well-earned prize.”
The call in this verse is that for defense.
There is an instinct that attends this impulse to self-preservation that strikes one forcibly as being prominent in the patriotism of the present time, and that is fear. It is an impulse that manifests itself when one’s existence or vital interests are threatened. The peoples of the world today are in an excitement of fear because each one of them believes that national existence and the personal values that depend upon it are endangered. There is a reason why it is easy for nations, while trusting in their own good intentions, to be suspicious of one another. When the individual looks at his own country, he is likely to see the common people who are all about him and are like himself. And, since he feels that his own purposes are good, he can easily credit good motives to his fellow-citizens. But when, on the other hand, he looks into another country, he is likely to see the governing class looming up, since that is the class that figures most prominently in the newspapers. And it is this class which is likely to be mostaggressively nationalistic, and is, moreover, the object of very little understanding by the ordinary man. Hence, while he thinks that all the good people that he knows cannot comprise anything that is inhuman, he can believe that there may very well be foreign monsters. The result is fear, fear of other countries, a fear that breaks out into a panic when danger arises, and drives men to seek the safety of the fatherland. Now the present is a time of panic, and the impulse of fear has put its impress deep upon current patriotism.
But what is feared tends to become hated too, and so patriotism gets tinged with hate. Examples of it are at hand. This war has produced its “Hymn of Hate,” so labeled, and others not so labeled. Many of the Psalms are expressions of patriotic hate, and since the war began have been read as such. J. M. Robertson[20]contends that patriotism is nothing else but fear and hatred. To his mind patriotism is not love or affection at all, and the only apparent affection there may be, is that which is compelled by the necessity for common action against an enemy. Fear itself, Robertson points out, implies a hostile impulse; love and hate, cohesion and repulsion, are to him strictly correlative terms; there is no love which is not linked with hate. “It is not,” he says, “brotherhood, or sympathy, or goodwill that unites the general population in a flush of passion against another population: the ostensible brotherhood of the moment is merely a passing product of the union of egoisms.”[21]
It is certain that in great measure Robertson is right. But one may well doubt the truth of the assertion that it is necessary to hate in order to love. It is not necessary to hate one woman in order to love another, or to have an enemy in order to possess a friend. Neither does it seem essential in the nature of things to hate one country in order to be able to love another. Moreover, hatred is not unqualifiedly a term of opprobrium. How can one rightly care for anything without in some way resenting attacks upon it? There are such things as righteous wrath and righteous hatred if they be directed against what is evil.
These remarks upon fear and hatred throw further light upon some of the phenomena of patriotism already touched upon. One can better understand now the frantic excitement that often attends a national crisis; fear “more than ... any other instinct, tends to bring to an end at once all other mental activity, riveting the attention upon its object to the exclusion of all others.”[22]New light is thrown upon the solidarity the group shows. Under the stimulus offear, the herd instinctively unites. Unity is the basis of morale. And the individual subordinates himself to the group; his normal intolerance of isolation is heightened in the presence of fear. And a corollary of all this is that the patriotism of fear is destructive of thought, but is prolific in unity of emotion and action.
Self-assertion is an attitude which under the conflict of interests with others may be induced. And in the external affairs of nations, it may be brought to triumph over the motive of security. The means by which this is done is through the argument that only by taking an aggressive part can one defend himself, the argument in other words, that the best defense is a good offense. The result is that the distinction between defensive and offensive warfare is liable to be obliterated, a fact which adds to the perplexities of the problem of war. “The feeling that war is always defensive wrecks the peace propaganda. The word defensive is capable of being stretched indefinitely. It is not confined necessarily to preventing an invasion. A people will feel that it is fighting a defensive war if it attacks a nation which may attack it in the future.... Or the people may feel that what it regards as its legitimate expansion is being thwarted.... So by imperceptible gradations every war can be justified, and, as a matter of fact, is justified as defensive.”[23]When once a war is started, a people will support it, even if it is aggressive, and if one couples with this the fact that when a nation arms in self-defense, it acquires the means of aggression, he can understand how easily a patriotism which supports only a policy of self-preservation can be brought to support a policy of self-assertion.
One way in which the will to self-assertion is likely to manifest itself is as an impulse to expansion. A stationary condition is not satisfactory to the group; it desires to reach out. This impulse shows itself in churches and orders of all kinds by the constant demand for new members. The group wants to see itself grow. But if nations grow, they are apt to think that they need more land. And when this occurs their patriotism will attach itself to the desire for expansion, and become imperialism. J. M. Robertson couples the wordsPatriotism and Empirein the title of a book, and in that book he says, “Patriotism conventionally defined as the love of country, ... turns out rather obviously to stand for love of more country.”[24]And where there is coupled with this the impulse of acquisition, it becomes plain why the economic rivalry of nations has been so important in bringing about the situation out of which war arises.
The impulse of expansion undergoes but a slight change to become the will to domination. This latter is a primitive impulse. The Indian was taught to despise manual labor, but to glory in the overcoming and plundering of other tribes. It is still dominant in the race. What men desire, at least in the Western world, is power, and they would rather exercise dominion over others than be free themselves. Goethe puts the idea in poetical form:
“How often has it arisen! Yes, and it will ariseEver and evermore! No man yields sovereigntyUnto his fellow: none will yield to himWho won the power by force, and by force keeps his hold.For man, who cannot rule his own unruly heart,Is hot to rule his neighbor, bind him to his will.”[25]
The desire for dominion was awakened by the Napoleonic aggressions, and has played a great part in fanning the flame of nationalism in the nineteenth century. It has given nationalism an aggressive and militant character. And the people of a democratic country are not immune from the virus; they as well as kings sometimes give themselves up to the thirst for domination, a fact which has at least some bearing upon whether or not democracy will make the world safe. The citizen rarely disputes the external sovereignty of his country. Consequently the fact of internal democracy by no means gives assurance that a country will uniformly abstain from assuming the attitude of a dynastic state when it faces the world. Democracy often ceases at the water’s edge.
Pride is a part of patriotism. Men walk with heads up and chests out at the consciousness of belonging to a conquering or respected nation. The triumphal processions of the Romans were a spectacle that no doubt stirred patriotism of this variety in noble Roman hearts. They could “point with pride” to their glory. And a little touch of glory makes the whole world kin; modern men in their swelling national pride are of the same stock as the ancient men of Rome. Men now identify themselves with their group, and feel that along with it, they themselves rise or fall in importance. If the country submits to another’s will, they hang their heads in shame; if it imposes upon another its own will, they hold their heads high. An important practical consequence of national pride is that no people now would voluntarily consent to peace without honor, which is food for thought in the planning of peace.
The patriotism of pride is not loath to meet its adversary upon the field of honor. When nations have a lively sense of power and prestige, a situation is created which furnishes admirable fuel for trouble. For insecure pride will induce fear, and fearful pride will allow no nation to do other than to resent insults, real or supposed, promptly and bitterly. Material interests need not clash in order that a war be provoked. If the patriot says to himself that the country’s honor has been assailed, the fight is on, no matter what the insult may consist in; it may have to do with only a matter of mere punctilio. An insult has been offered, and injured pride does not enjoy itself until it reaps revenge. Of course the crime is that the insult is a public one. “The act that, more certainly than any other, provokes vengeful emotion is the public insult, which, if not immediately resented, lowers one in the eyes of one’s fellows. Such an insult calls out one’s positive self-feeling, with its impulse to assert oneself and to make good one’s value and power in the public eye.”[26]
But it does not happen that any one country is allowed to assert itself without opposition. Others will follow the example, attempt to assert themselves, and make good their prestige. What then happens is that there is a race for power, and patriotism becomes a spirit of rivalry or emulation.[27]The fact is that what most of us desire is not only well-being but prestige, not only theGood, but theBetteror theBest. Athletic contests are invested with such great interest not only because they may be good games, but because they arecontests, contests perhaps between traditional rivals, or are for the championship of this, that, or the other. It is likewise with countries. National welfare is viewed at the present time very largely as a competitive success. And affairs have come to such a condition that no one country dares to let up in its vigilance in the universal competition. Individually it is helpless. If it relaxes, its competitor will monopolize all the advantages, its own prestige will be lowered, and it will be inviting aggression in which it will be preyed upon. There doesn’t seem to be much help for the situation except in the concerted action of nations. But in the meanwhile the struggle goes on, and patriots throw themselves into the spirit of it with abandon.
It should be said that it is not inevitable that the impulse of rivalry should issue exclusively in destructive conflict. One does not need to destroy his competitor in order that he himself should be benefited, and in fact enlightened competition does desire the preservation and welfare of the competitors. One way in which the emulative impulsediffers from the combative impulse, for instance, is just this, that it does seek to preserve a defeated competitor. The possibility is, then, that patriotism may be sublimated into a higher and more innocent form of rivalry than what we have at present.
We have, however, to deal with the present fact that the rivalry of nations is likely to issue in war. And hence it becomes necessary to take into consideration the impulse of pugnacity. The plain fact is that war has a fascination. Even if one’s own country be not involved, one turns eagerly to the war news in the daily papers. History is the history of wars. The attractiveness of war is expressed in the following verse of Richard Le Gallienne:
“WarI abhorAnd yet how sweetThe sound along the marching streetOf drum and fife! and I forgetWet eyes of widows, and forgetBroken old mothers, and the wholeDark butchery without a soul.”
There is that about the martial life which excites enthusiasm, and that enthusiasm gets connected with patriotism. Patriotism runs at high tide in war times.[28]
And now, does the presence of the instinct of pugnacity compel at once an unfavorable verdict on patriotism? There is no doubt that pugnacity may lead to what is undesirable; it does become “dark butchery without a soul.” Is patriotism for that to be condemned? In answer to this two things may be said. To begin with, militancy may be a good, and can no more be condemned in the abstract than can pacifism. There is no ground for saying that pacifism is a virtue in itself. One might be pacifistic simply because he did not care about his fellow men, or simply because he was afraid to fight. Nonresistance is indeed under some conditions a good, and so is the impulse of pugnacity. Totally devoid of it, neither the individual nor the nation can live in other than pusillanimous cowardice; their ideals will not be much, and from them shall be taken even the little that they have. In the second place, patriotism does not issue exclusively in war. It has already been shown that it has a positive character of attachment, and may develop without reference to war, but wholly with reference to the pursuits of peace.
The analysis of the impulses of patriotism has emphasized the truth of a proposition that was stated at the beginning; patriotism is a complex phenomenon. It is, as it actually appears, composed of a wide variety of impulses, which appear in shifting combinations, and show themselves now in one person and time and now in another.
The conclusion may also be drawn that there has been found here no ground for passing a final verdict either favorable or unfavorable upon patriotism. There has been found in the instinctive basis of patriotism an element which gives it its tremendous power, but that result does not answer the question regarding the moral worth of patriotism. Instincts are just tendencies that taken simply as instincts have no moral character at all. Their moral worth depends upon the way in which they are used. Consequently, before one can estimate the worth of patriotism, he must see how these impulses are used in it.
The impulses themselves are not patriotism. They form raw material for and give character to it, but they themselves are not patriotism. They serve equally well as raw material for other human interests far removed from this one. Instincts alone are unorganized, and are capable of being shaped into an indefinite number of meanings. The further question that will ultimately have to be answered is that concerning what the organizing factor is that can ever give to any combination of impulses the meaning,—patriotism. That investigation will next be entered upon.