Conclusions
It is an important point to observe that most if not all of the specific instinctive reactions and feelings engendered in war, or occurring as an incitement to war, are capable of inducing ecstatic states. There are several of these movements and states, each of which can become, so to speak, a foundation for the development of ecstasy. Combat may and must do this, and probably war could never be carried on at all unless danger and death had qualities which arouse ecstatic moods. There is a joy in fighting, in killing, and in the tumult of battle that becomes one of the most important of military assets, and is one of the main elements of morale in the field. This capacity of human nature to make over that which is intrinsically painful into the pleasurable is one of the paradoxes of human life to be explained and taken into account in the study of the psychology of war. Fear itself may induce an ecstasy, both in the individual, as we know from many reported cases from the late war, and as a social mood in which the fear contributes a quality of intensity and ferocity to patriotism. The gambling mood, which is in part a play with fear, is another ecstatic reaction seen in war, and it is often the means of clearing the way, so to speak, for free and uninhibited action.
Of course all the purely æsthetic elements in the social life have this effect of arousing exalted moods, and indeed that is precisely their function. All social impulses tend in this same direction, and there is induced in all intense social states an intoxication mood. In these social states, the reproductive motive is often clearly discernible, but partly by common consent and convention, and partlybecause of the composite and fused form of impulses in the social mood, robbed of its specific reactions and converted into a new product, regarded both as conduct and as feeling.
All religious states aroused in war tend to become ecstatic. Their work is to overcome the sense of tragedy of war, and it is only by becoming intense and voluminous, so to speak, that they can accomplish their work at all. Either they must end in a mysticism which includes or takes the form of exalted moods, or they must, as can be accomplished in some temperaments, become dynamic states by inspiring a fatalistic attitude, which is at bottom a sense of throwing oneself unreservedly into the hands of fate.
We may best think of these complex war moods as the forces out of which wars are made, and the spirit in which they are conducted, but not as by their own initiative creating wars. These intoxication moods or ecstasies are forces which contain desires that are general, we say; they are mental processes that act as a means of greatly increasing the volume of all social actions. When we analyze them we find specific desires in them, and evidences of instinct and primitive feeling, but they are not in themselves tendencies toward specific reactions and in fact the motor tendencies they contain more or less inhibit one another.
In general, these war moods of which we speak areprecipitatedby definite and incisive reactions of fear and anger. These emotions of fear or anger seem to be the necessary positive stimuli to induce the moods of war. Fear and anger, no one can maintain, are the sole causes of war, and they are far from being the sole factors of the war moods, but they are the usual precipitants of war.
Fear and anger as social emotions cannot sustain organized and effectual social activity upon a large scale; we see them always, in war, taken up, transformed, absorbed in moods which are at once more practical, and more exaltedand which, as complex processes, can be sustained over long periods of time. But these primitive reactions of anger and fear enter into the ecstatic moods, become associated with or induce æsthetic and religious states of consciousness, gain moral justification or religious exploitation, become aspects of directive and dynamic moods and so give force and efficiency to morale and strategy.
War appears as a breakdown of certain modes of volition. Certain types of conflict are abandoned, and aggressive activities become more simple and powerful, but war is no reversion to primitive instinct, or to any number of instincts. The resulting states of mind are too rational as means, and too exalted and ideal to be thus primitive. New content is introduced into social consciousness and new purposes come to light in these ecstasies, even though the consciously sought objectives may be archaic and conventional and the mental states traceable to more elementary states, and the conduct be similar in purpose and type to the simpler forms of conduct we find in the animal world What we are trying to impress here is the well known truth that the whole of a thing is not necessarily contained in its parts. It is the meaning of the war-mood as a whole, as a summation of many factors of the mental life, and as a direction of social consciousness as a whole that is its most important characteristic.
That experiences and motives which belong to the field of the aesthetic play an important part in war can hardly be doubted. The whole history of war shows this, and even in the beginning war seems to be an activity carried on in part for its own sake, and not entirely for its practical results, and thus has qualities which later are explicitly aesthetic. We cannot of course separate sharply the aesthetic motive from everything else in studying so highly complex an object as war, but that war does partake of the nature of what we call thebeautiful, and that the craving for the beautiful is a factor in the causes of war seem to be certain. The relation of art to war is of course no new theme. War has often been praised because of its aesthetic nature, and its dramatic features. It is called a beautiful adventure. It is reproduced in pictorial art, represented in music, and thus glorified and adorned, showing at least that it can readily be made to appear beautiful if it does not in itself possess beauty. Those who think of war as related to play also connect it with art. Nicolai (79), who condemns war, says that it is when war as an instinctive action is no longer useful, but is performed for its own sake that it becomes beautiful.
We cannot undertake to enumerate all the aesthetic qualities of war, or to show all the relations of the aesthetic aspects to other motives of war in detail, since to do so would mean to work out some of the fundamental principles of aesthetics. We may begin, however, by saying that war asa whole, as a movement in which there is complete organization of social forces shows already the marks of aesthetic experience and of art. As such a unification of interest in a strong and uninhibited movement, as a coördinated expression of deep desires, a multiplicity of action with a unity of purpose, so to speak, war is aesthetic in form although to mention such very general qualities does not go very far toward characterizing an object.
In its meaning astragedywar contains and exerts a strong aesthetic appeal. With all its horrors, war fascinates the mind. As fate, death, history it inspires awe, and creates a sense of the inevitableness of events and of the play of transcendental and inexorable forces in human life. When, under any influence, these feelings appear as an accepting and willing of evil, we have the tragic movement as we find it in art. The deathmotifin war is the center of a variety of states which are ecstatic and have aesthetic quality. The religion of valor, the passion that is aroused by abandoning oneself to fate, the absolute devotion of service are aesthetic in form as experience, whatever else they may be. The relation of these motives to love and to the reproductive impulses has often been noticed. Devotion and death appear as beautiful; their representation in art is in part a recognition of this fact; in part it is an effort to transform them into the forms of the aesthetic. Art celebrates, but also creates, this luxury of feeling, and war also in its own dramatic movement transforms ugly and plain facts of life by including them in ecstatic states, and surrounding them with glory.
The ideal of glorified death plays a large part in the spirit of war. In war the fear of death is not only in great part stilled, but there is a longing to tempt fate and also to experience death itself, and this desire may become ecstatic. Here we see in effect one of the most important functions of the aesthetic, which is to carry on adrama of the willin which something that is in itselfpainful becomes pleasant and desired. The desire for war is to some extent a desire for death, a longing for a form of euthanasia in which the individual dies but in a sense lives—lives as glorified in death, and also in the continuance of the life of the group and of the country into which he has been absorbed. It is of course its relation to death that more than anything else has made it necessary that war should appeal to art, and take an aesthetic form, and without the aid of the aesthetic, war could not maintain itself in the world. As a sheer fulfillment of duty war could not survive. By the strength of its aesthetic appeal war must control and overcome the instinct of self-preservation.
War appeals to the human mind as the great adventure of life. To the healthy normal man this appeal, under certain circumstances, may be compelling in its power. Man feels the call of adventure in his blood. War may seem at times the natural expression of what is most real and most essentially masculine in human nature. War is the essence of all the dramatic and heroic story of the world. The past lives most vividly in this theme of war, and the sense of remoteness in time lends an aesthetic coloring to all the story of war, and is in part its fascination. The dead heroes of to-day are glorified by linking their names with the great heroes of the past.
To the glory of the individual, which is an aesthetic appeal, is added the still stronger appeal of the ideal of national glory. The image created in the mind which sustains the devotion of the individual is also an aesthetic form. It is the idea of a nation transformed by story, symbol and eloquence that is established. The dimness and mysticism of the long ago, all dramatic scenes of the national life, the forms of royalty are used in transforming reality into an ideal. The consciousness of a nation is indeed an artist which creates an ideal nation, glorifying and transforming the past, and painting a vivid picture ofthe empire that is to be. No little part in the German idea of the fatherland has been taken by the revived image of the old German Empire, and the story of Charlemagne, the Ottonides, the Hohenstaufen and the Hohenzollern which has been woven into the life of the present and has become an aesthetic setting for the idea of future greatness.
In the religion of valor, also, we may find aesthetic elements. Valor represents in this cult the spirit of the superior man. It is an aristocratic idea. Military life is full of this theme. The ideals ofnoblesse oblige, honor, the spirit of sportsmanship, enter into it, and all these concepts are in part aesthetic in nature. It is neither as moral nor as practical ideas that they have so deeply influenced society, but because of their appeal to the sense of the beautiful. All this aspect of war and military life, both in its motives and in its forms, is closely related to the pure beauty of art. The play spirit also, which in some of its developments at least is aesthetic, enters into the motives of war. War, we say, is the great adventure. It is the realization of power. It is an expression of the love of the sense of freedom. It is the great game, in which everything is staked. The love of danger and the love of gambling with life that it contains have roots that are also roots of various forms of art.
Another element, aesthetic in motive and form, obviously related to the reproductive functions of the individual, is the display motive. This motive of display is concerned especially with the idea of courage. It is of course a deep desire of the male to display courage before the female. This display motive must be the main motive of theuniformand all the other ornamental aspects of military life. Rank, titles and decorations belong to the same movement. They are indications of the advancement of the man in those essential qualities of the soldier, the chief of which is courage. The aesthetic forms in which courage is represented help to sustain it, and are an important element in morale,and they also serve a purpose in creating or adding to the allurement of the service and the fascination of war. It is the craving for the display of courage, the desire of the man "to show the stuff that is in him," that gives to war some of its most persistent aesthetic forms, and these aesthetic forms help both to make the display of courage effective and to create courage.
Among these aesthetic elements of war must be considered of course the rhythms, the forms, all the concerted action, the marching (which may be regarded as one of the forms of the dance), the parade, the maneuvering and drill that enter into military life. Already in primitive warfare these aesthetic forms begin to appear and indicate clearly both their practical significance as means of affecting the will, and their relations to the religious and to the reproductive motives. The warrior tries to create in his person the appearance of power, and also by the aesthetic forms he introduces into his warfare, the feeling of power. He believes indeed that through these aesthetic forms he actually creates or exerts power. This is the motive of the war dance, which as an aesthetic form produces this ecstasy of the feeling of power. This power is often conceived to be magical; the women dancing at home are supposed to exert an influence upon the men in the field or upon the enemy, and the savage believes that in his own displays he actually overcomes the spirit of his enemy. Art is here plainly serving a purpose. Display is a means of creating an impression in the minds of the enemy. It also has the purpose of creating an effect in the mind of the soldier himself. The art in military life is, indeed, to give the impression of power to all who must be affected by the exhibition of force.
All social life contains elements that appeal to the aesthetic sense, and these aesthetic elements are by no means solely ornamental. The universal development of etiquette and manners has reference to very practical aspects of the social life. Their function is to influence the will. The highlydeveloped etiquette of military life is not merely to facilitate the military functions, and it is no explanation of the formalism of the military life to say that this is a sign of its archaic nature. Formalism in this life is one of the means taken to cover up all the details of militarism that are repugnant: the hardship, the lack of freedom and the like. Etiquette acts persuasively upon the will, it helps to make military life desired, and to make men submissive under control of absolute leaders. All formalism in social life, considered in one aspect of it, is a symbol of the resignation of the will of the individual. As thus a symbol it may either convey or mediate social feeling, and when social feeling is absent the art of manners may become a substitute for this social feeling, and in both these ways it is a means of giving to society cohesion, order and form.
Such considerations as these help to explain the longing for war or its equivalent which persists in the human heart. It helps us to realize the truth of Cramb's (66) assertion that the whole history of the world shows that man has lacked not only the power but the will to end war and establish perpetual peace. There are still motives in the mind of man that make him approve of war. War is perpetuated because of its heroic form, as a form of experience in which the meaning of life is felt to be exploited, in which life is transformed and glorified, in which the tragedy of life, which in any case is inevitable, becomes a tragedy which, because it bears the form of art, is acceptable and even longed for. This is the allurement of war, its persistent illusion, perhaps. The aesthetic forms of war take war out of the field of reason, and on occasion make it transcend or pervert reason. So we may understand why it is true that sometimes those who but little understand why they are to die on the field of battle may display the greatest courage and the greatest enthusiasm for war, and we must not say that these causes are fatuous because they exist in the realm of aesthetic values.
If we take war too realistically, with reference to its practical motives, its mere killing and looting, which we may suspect are related to the nutritional motive that we always find running through human conduct, and leave out of account those aspects of war which seem to belong mainly to the reproductive motive, to the enthusiasm and intoxication and art of the world, we shall to that extent misunderstand it. These motives cannot, of course, be separated definitely from one another in analyzing conduct, but we cannot be very wrong in differentiating phases of war which belong predominantly to the reproductive motive. It is because, at least, all deep tendencies of life are involved in war that it is so hard to eliminate it from experience. If war were an instinctive reaction it might be controlled by reason. If it were an atavism or a rudimentary organ some social surgery or other might relieve us of it. But war is a product of man's idealism, misdirected and impracticable idealism though it may be, but still something very expressive of what man is. It is this idealism of nations, leading them to the larger life, that makes them cling to war, whether for good or for evil. It will avail little to prove to the world that war is an evil, so long as war is desired, or so long as something which war so readily yields is desired. Statistics of eugenics and proofs that war ruins business will not yet cure us of our habit of war, and not at all so long as there is a vacancy in life which only the dramatic experiences of war can fill. When war is abandoned, it will be given up probably not because economists and sociologists vote against k, and we see that peace is good, but by the consent of a world which, once for all, is willing to renounce something that is dear to it and held to be good, if for no other reason, because it symbolizes what life and reality are. The world appears to have two minds about war, or at least it does not hold consistently to any one attitude toward it. Beneath all judgments about theevils of war, there is the allurement of these aesthetic motives which must be reckoned with in any psychology of war, or in any practical plan for eliminating war from the future experience of the race.
Many authors find in patriotism or in national honor the chief or the sole cause of war. Jones (37), the Freudian, for example, says that patriotism is the sum of those causes of war which are conscious as distinguished from the repressed motives. Nicolai (79) says that patriotism and chauvinism would have no meaning and no interest without reference to war, and that for the arts of peace one needs no patriotism at all. Hoesch-Ernst (32), another German writer, says that patriotism has made history a story of wars. It has developed the highest virtues (and the worst vices), but it creates artificial boundaries among peoples, and gives to every fighter the belief that he is contending against brute force. Veblen (97) says that patriotism is the only obstacle to peace among the nations. MacCurdy (37) speaks of the paradox of human nature seen in the fact that the loyalty we call patriotism, which may make a man a benefactor to the whole race, may become a menace to mankind when it is narrowly focussed. Novicow says that what shall be foreign is a purely conventional matter. Another writer remarks that patriotism is the guise under which the instincts of tiger and wolf run riot.
Several writers, Powers (75), and especially Veblen, place questions of national honor among the main causes of war. Veblen would hold that wars never occur unless the questions involved are first converted into questions of national honor—and are then, but only then, supported as moral issues. Other writers are to be found who make the sameclaims for honor, saying that wars are always over questions of national honor—honor always meaning here, let us observe, not moral principle but prestige, dignity, analogous to what we call personal pride in the individual.
Broadly speaking, we may say that such views of war base it upon the fact that nations are individuals, having personality and self-consciousness, and are moved by emotions such as dominate the individual, although such analogies between individual and group are never free from objection. But that the consciousness of the group as an individual may be exceedingly intense, full of aggressiveness, intolerance and pride, of great sensitiveness to all outside the group, is, of course, obvious from the history of nations. Groups thus endowed with a sense of solidarity and sensitiveness become highly vitalized and persistent personalities which stalk through the pages of history with tremendous power and tenacity of purpose. Nations thus live intensely, and in their intense feelings and personal attributes there are expressed purposes and ideals, conscious and unconscious, analogous to those which make the individual also an historical entity.
There seem to be two aspects of group personality that need to be investigated in detail in any study of war, and which must be distinguished from one another, as they may be by referring to the primitive or central emotional quality which each has. These are patriotism and the sense of honor, the former, for our purposes, to be regarded as the sum of the affections a people has for that which is its own; the second a sum of those feelings and attitudes, the emotional root of which ispride. These feelings are the affective basis of the idea ofnationalism.
Patriotism, or love of country or feeling of loyalty toward country, is a highly complex emotion or mood, and its object, an ideal construction, is formed by a process of abstraction in which certain qualities of home, environment, social objects selected by those feelings are made over intoa composite whole. Patriotism is immediately connected with the fact that men, by some biological or other necessity are formed into groups, in which the consciousness of the individual in regard to the group and its members and its habitat is different from the consciousness in regard to everything outside. Patriotism is devotion to all that pertains to the group as a separate unit, and its form and intensity are dependent upon what the group as a unit does. The size and organization of the group to which the patriotic feeling may go out may, it is obvious, differ widely.
There appear to be five more or less distinct and different factors in patriotism; or, we might say, five or more objects of attachment, the love of which all together constitutes patriotism. These objects are: home, as physical country; the group as collection of individuals; mores, the sum of the customs of a people; country as personality or historical object, and its various symbols; leaders or organized government or state, its conventions and representations.
The deepest of all strata in the very complex feeling of patriotism, one which is concerned in every relation among nations, is the devotion to, or habituation to—or we might say identity with—the great complex of ideals, feelings, and the like which make up the customs, folkways, mores or ethos of a group. The individual as a conscious person is to such an extent created by these conscious factors that we find that the reality sense is in part produced by them. We have already referred to the belief on the part of many peoples that they alone are real. Foreigners with different mores probably always seem less real than our own people: they may even be looked upon as automata, as not being moved by the feelings and purposes that we ourselves have. The language of the foreigner, the uneducated man is inclined to think of as having no meaning. Every group has its own ways, and whatever else war may be, it is in every case an argument for the superiority of the ways of the group. Each group in war feels that its ownmost intimate possessions, its morality and its genius are attacked. It guards these instinctively, and a part of the purpose of aggression is the desire to make these things prevail in the world, because they are felt to be the only right, true and sensible ways. This preference for our own ways, and participation in them, is the basic fact of nationality.
The feeling of patriotism is thus primarily an æsthetic appreciation (or at least an immediate and intuitive one) of the totality of the life of the group. Just as standards of normality and artistic form in regard to the human person and its adornment vary from group to group, and are produced in the consciousness of the group, so there is a reaction of pleasure to, and attachment for, the whole of the life that surrounds the individual. This appreciation is wider than moral feeling, which indeed is in part based upon it, and is a sense of the fitness of any act to belong to the whole of the conduct that promotes the welfare of the group.
Patriotism is best known, or at least it is most celebrated, as an attachment to the native land asplace. This is the poet's patriotism. It is, however, something more than a mere love of the homeland as landscape, and we cannot, indeed, separate out any pure love of physical country. The love of country seems to be an expansion of the attachment to home, as the place in which the family relations are experienced. The sense of place is the core of the love of home, but it is supplemented and reënforced by the personal affections. The attachment to place has also its biological roots, the sense of familiarity of place being, of course, as the basis of orientation, a deep element in consciousness. Fear of the unknown increases the attachment to the known. The land as the source of livelihood is loved, and there are also older elements in the love of the land as is shown by myths and folklore. There is in it the idea of ownership but also the idea of belonging to the land. So there is both the filial and the parental attitude in patriotism. Asfatherland or motherland country is superior to and antecedent to us; as possession it is something to hold and to transmit, to improve and to leave the impress of our work upon. As historic land there is the idea of sacred soil, of land which persists through all time. Ancestor worship enters; the soil as the resting place of forefathers acquires not only a religious meaning, but there is attached to it such feeling of an æsthetic nature as is attached to everything that is full of tradition. The protective attitude is prominent in this patriotic love of land. There is in it the fear of invasion, a sense of the sacredness and inviolability of the body of a country when it has once been established as an historical entity. A study of the psychology of invasion and of homesickness would no doubt throw further light upon the still unknown aspects of the intricate moods of home love.
A third element in patriotism is social feeling. This is primitive, but whether it is a herd consciousness or a radiation of the social feelings connected with blood relationship and community of immediate practical interests it is not especially important to decide in this connection, except that the assumption of a specific herd instinct as distinguished from social feeling or instinct appears to be unnecessary. Loyalty of the individual to the group, which is accompanied by or is based upon intensified or ecstatic feeling is one of the strongest elements of patriotism. Social feeling as an attachment to the widest group, the nation, is in general a latent feeling or an undeveloped one. We see it becoming active and intense only under circumstances in which the whole group is threatened or for some other reason is compelled to act as a unit. The recent psychology of the soldier shows us that absolute devotion to or absorption in the whole may be produced automatically by the proper stimuli, and may be controlled as the mechanism of morale, and that elementary sensations enter into it. The wider social consciousness as devotion to the whole group,the nation, is based upon such reactions, and can probably not be fully, developed without them.
This transformation of the individual is something desired and sought by the individual. It comes as a fulfillment of impulses that are latent in the social life, and these impulses are tendencies to seek exalted states of social feeling, rather than to perform specific social functions. War is seized upon by the social consciousness, so to speak, as an opportunity to extend itself and become more intense, and indeed in war we see the social consciousness performing a work of genius, overcoming apparently insurmountable obstacles and aversions. Under such circumstances, social feeling becomes strongly fortified against many suggestions that tend to break it down. An intense ferocity is directed toward any disloyal member of the group, a fictitious character may be attributed to the enemy, and there is an imaginative interpretation of all his acts in a manner favorable to uniting the sentiment of the group. This does not appear to be merely a defensive reaction or a result of fear, but an awareness of the precarious condition of the social feeling itself, when it is widely extended. In its moments of most extreme and fanatical intensity it is likely to be most unstable. It has been said that the surest way to break down social feeling is to make it include too much. The conditions of war always create that danger. Patriotism is greatly intensified, but it is in danger of collapse. The mild patriotism and yet secure cohesion of peace is replaced by a social consciousness increased in breadth and depth, but which is liable also to sudden contraction. All nations when at war appear to be quite as much afraid of themselves as they are of the enemy. It is in part this susceptibility of social feeling to rapid and extreme variation that makes patriotism so mysterious a force. It may be extended in a moment to unite supposed incompatibles, or again apparently strongly cemented groups may fall into disunion. This seems to be due to the fact that socialfeeling is plastic and is subject to control and is a force and not merely an instinctive reaction.
The fourth element of patriotism is devotion to leader, to government, or to the idea of state. Devotion to leader must have been one of the earliest forms of loyalty. The prestige of the leader is acquired as the result of any action of the group under stimuli that produce either fear or anger. Just as the necessity for strong action creates the leader out of average humanity, so continuation of this necessity, that is the whole historical movement of the life of the group such as a nation continues to add elements of prestige to leadership. The exaltation and typically to some extent the deification of the leader is a natural consequence or aspect of the dramatic life of the group. The leader becomes symbolic of the group, and of its purposes and meaning, so that in devoting itself to a leader the people do more than sustain an emotional relation to a superior person. They transfer their own individual nature, so to speak, to the leader so that he becomes the essence or the spirit of the people.
The dynasty is the connecting link between the leader as the object of devotion of a people and the abstract idea of the state as an entity. The prestige and all the supernaturalism contained in the ideas of divine rights and divine descent that have become attached to the idea of kings are transferred to the government, or extended to the government or state. The illusion of superiority and remoteness is kept up by various forms and ceremonials. Becoming an abstract form, the organization or the office remaining while its personnel changes, the state acquires the character of a religious object. It takes on the character of the eternal, while still it retains all the persuasive and suggestive qualities that belong to individuals. The idea of state thus commands a very high degree of loyalty, and is in a sense itself a product of the feeling of loyalty. Once established the state becomes a medium through which patriotism maybe subjected to control and also be manipulated for political ends. It can be extended, transferred, contracted according to what at any time may be subsumed under the government that has thus come to be the central and coordinating factor in the object of patriotism.
Another element of patriotism appears in the form of a deep reaction of the mind of the individual, usually under the influence of social stimuli that take the form of artistic or dramatic situations, to the idea of country as a historical personage. This stimulus may be symbolic—the flag or any other emblem signifying the life or the spirit of a country; or it may be concrete, historic, a story, and this story, which is the content of the idea of country, is in general a narrative assuming a certain artistic form in which facts are treated at least selectively, and usually imaginatively. This work of portrayal of the life of a nation by its story is consciously or unconsciously an appeal to the will; it is given artistic rather than scientific form for this reason. Its purpose is to present a national spirit, or ideal, or principle, and also to persuade the mind to become loyal to this spirit of country.
All countries, as the object of the feeling of patriotism, tend to be personified, and it is thus as a person that country commands the deepest loyalty of the individual. Hence the personified representation of country whenever the will of the individual is appealed to most strongly. Redier (30), a French writer, illustrates this very clearly when he pleads that the interest of the motherland must be placed first. It is not for liberty, or for the civilization of the world that the French are fighting, he says, but for France, "that most saintly, animated and tragic of figures." It is by this process of personification of country that the patriotism of the individual becomes most complete. He thus becomes loyal to a living reality representing an idea, a spirit. To defend the honor and the integrity of this person, one is willing to sacrifice everything that is individually possessed,in causes that can affect one materially in no important way. The desire for personal identity and immortality may be transferred to country as thus idealized, and the individual is satisfied to lose himself that country may live. The common man realizes in a simple and concrete way, in regard to country, the Hegelian conception of state as the reality of mind in the world. About this idea of country held by the truly patriotic mind, as we find it expressed in history and in literature, there grows up a religious sentiment, which protects from criticism the qualities of the ideal personage. A certain pathos of country attaches itself to all who as great individuals represent country, and to all its portrayals and symbols. All these symbols acquire a high degree of suggestive force because of the depth of sentiment and the richness of the content of the ideas that have produced them.
Patriotism, then, is a very complex idea and feeling which we realize as love of country—or, as we might better say, it is an animation by the idea of a very complex object which is country. It is a profound attachment, rooted in the most original and essential relations, and appears to be natural and necessary to every normal mind. The individual consciousness is complete only by including the attachments, in narrower and broader relations, to precisely the elements that enter into patriotism—to place, to the fundamental ways and appreciations of the social surroundings, to persons, to authority, to traditions. The composite effects of these attachments may be greater or smaller, as determined by a totality of conditions, but the foundations of patriotism, whatever its object, are deep in consciousness.
The presence and persistence of patriotism in the world as a deep and intense feeling raises questions that are of both theoretical and practical importance. Here we are interested mainly in the relation of patriotism to war. There is a widespread view that may be expressed somewhat as follows. Patriotism and internationalism or cosmopolitanism are twoopposites. Patriotism delimitsgroups, whether rightly or wrongly, and therefore produces antagonism in the world, and either causes wars directly or maintains a continual threat of wars. On the other hand there is cosmopolitanism, a very little too much of which might destroy civilization by removing the inspiration that country gives. Patriotism, standing for the integrity of historic entities, makes the world a world of nations having separate and conflicting wills. Thus we have a choice of evils—between a world of ardent, quarrelsome, but efficient groups and a world in which the chief motive of progress, the vital principle of national growth, is left out.
What is the truth about this? What is the relation of patriotism to war? Confusion and difference of views are likely to arise from a failure to distinguish in the idea of nationalism as a whole, between two very different emotions and purposes. Psychologically, patriotism is a sum of affections. As such, it has a distinct character, constitutes a mood, the possession of which may characterize an individual, and dominance by which may be the main fact in life. As a devotion to certain objects, this motive of patriotism enters into the sphere of motives of war, but it does so mainly, in our view, as a powerful and highly suggestible energy which becomes aggressive only under the stimulus of threat to its objects. Patriotism is indeed tolerant by nature, and one may well doubt whether a genuine love of country is possible without a profound realization of the value of other countries as objects of devotion, and of the validity of the patriotism of every group. True patriotism must always be to some extent devotion to patriotism itself as a progressive force in the world, and it is, therefore, by the very fact of becoming intense and pure, a motive of internationalism.
Such patriotism seems to be free from most of the delusions of greatness that affect national consciousness. Its mood is optimistic and its spirit tolerant and just. We should say that, instead of causing wars, by any initiative ofits own, it is itself caused by wars. It grows in a medium of defensive attitudes. It may, of course, play into the hands of all the aggressive motives of war; there are always circumstances creating the illusion of danger, and it is possible, even, that there would be little war if there were no patriotism as love of country to support it. But on the other hand patriotism itself does not seem to be a cause of war. We should say, indeed, that patriotism, to the extent that it becomes intelligent and is a devotion to an ideal of country, and so is not dominated and influenced by other motives is a factor of peace in the world, and is moral in its principles and its nature. This is not the place in which to speak of internationalism as an ideal, but we may at least observe how, conceivably, patriotism may be cultivated, be greatly deepened and intensified, while at the same time and indeed because of this deepening of patriotism all international causes are also served. Such patriotism may leave us with the danger of wars, since it leaves us with a world of individuals having wills and self-interests. But this world, with such a danger of wars, would be better after all than a certain kind of cosmopolitanism in a world such as, for example, might be arranged by an unintelligent socialism.
National Honor
There is another aspect of nationalism, which is psychologically distinct from patriotism as love of country, because primitively it is based upon a different motive. Emotionally it is expressed finally as national pride, as we use the word mainly with a derogatory implication. Just as patriotic feeling is intensified and crystallized by fear, and is in a sense an overcoming of fear, by devotion, so this motive of pride rests upon a basis of jealousy and of hatred, and is essentially a movement in which display is used to obtain prestige, to overcome opposition and to defend consciousness against a sense of inferiority. As a displaymotive it contains the feeling of anger, and the impulses of combat, and its relation to the reproductive motive is obvious. It is as an aspect of a deeply pessimistic strain in national life, as a process in which an original and naïve sense of reality and superiority, challenged and attacked and brought into the field of opposition and criticism and thus negated by a feeling of inferiority, that this motive becomes of special interest to the psychology of nations and of war.
The roots of this pride and honor process we can find in the impulses which lead groups to demonstrate power and prowess to one another, and in the original feeling of reality which is accompanied by the belief on the part of the group that its own ways are normal and right. We might mention as significant the widespread belief on the part of very primitive peoples that they alone are real people, or are the superior people of the world. The Lapps, Sumner (70) says, regard themselves as "men" as distinguished from all other peoples, a form of self-consciousness which lingers in all such antitheses as Jew and Gentile, Greek and barbarian, and the like. This basic idea of difference in reality is not confined to a few peoples, but there is a tendency for every group to divide the world into two parties: selves and outsiders, and this feeling of difference readily develops into the moods in which there is a mystic sense on the part of a people of being the chosen people, and into those specific theories of superiority that run through the history of most if not of all nations. It belongs to the psychology of Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, and also to Americans as well as Germans; and we learn that Russian books and newspapers sometimes discuss thecivilizing mission of Russia.
That the motives of display and pride have been peculiarly active in Germany in the last few decades has been maintained by many writers. German writers are inclined to believe that the motive for the "attack upon Germany"was jealousy on the part of her enemies, that Germany was supreme in everything and other countries could tolerate this no longer. Germany has talked about her virtues, her rank, her coming place in the world. Bergson says that Germany's energy comes from pride. Some see the source of this alleged conceit of Germany and her excessive self-consciousness in Germany's hard experiences—the recent slavery, Germany's position as the battle ground of Europe, her late arrival among the great nations. Germany still lacks, they say, the quiet assurance that an old culture gives. Some call Germany morbid and quarrelsome. Again we hear the pride of Germany called an adolescent phenomenon, and they say that Germany is fighting not for principle but to see who is superior. Bosanquet (91) thinks that the lack of political liberty in Germany has had the effect of producing self-consciousness, and a morbid interest in small distinctions of title and rank, and that it is thwarted national ambition that has expressed itself in such writers as Treitschke and Bernhardi. Bourdon (67) thinks Germany is jealous of the culture and the glory and the political and literary prestige of France. Collier (68) says that Germany is forever looking into a mirror rather than out the open window and even sees herself a little out of focus. The seriousness of the Germans, others think, is an indication that Germany takesherselftoo seriously.
But national vanity, we see, is certainly not confined to Germany. The Germans at least think France is highly self-conscious, always thinking of her dignity, glory, prestige and of revenge. Wundt (85) feels much the same about the English. He says they always want to be first in everything, and to dominate the earth. We know that the Confederacy of the United States, at the outbreak of the Civil War, appealed to the world on the ground that it had reached the most noble civilization the world had ever seen. The Japanese (73), we have heard, believe that they are of divine descent, and that they are supreme in manliness,loyalty and virtue. Every nation presumably has somewhere in the back of its mind a belief in its own supremacy in something, and has a sense of being or having something that makes it unique in the world.
We can now see in part how the idea of national honor arises out of the pride of nations. Certain fundamental feelings issue in the form of claims of superiority or supremacy, which may be either vague and unclear or very definite and self-conscious. This claim to superiority is precisely what we mean by national vanity. With this consciousness there goes a knowledge that these claims are in general not recognized by other nations, or that the prestige which the recognition of this superiority presupposes is at least insecure. Since, of course, these claims to supremacy cannot all be valid, there must be a great amount of inferiority parading in the world as superiority, many fictitious and presumably half-hearted assumptions that must not only be defended against outsiders, but must also beinternally fortified. The pride and the conceit must be justified by the creation of a fictitious past, and of an impossible future. The motive of these falsifications on the part of race consciousness is clear. A nation is defending its claim to superiority by first establishing the claim in its own mind. These claims being really unfounded must be placed beyond criticism. They must be given a religious form. But also external forms and relations of an artificial nature must be established. Nations always hide behind barriers of formality. They make displays to one another. In this way the feeling and the appearance of superiority are kept up. Everything external to the group and not participating in its illusion of supremacy must bekeptexternal to it. The belief which the nation itself assumes in regard to its virtue must be demanded from all outsiders with whom the nation has relations of any kind. At least the forms of the recognition of the claim must be insisted upon. This is the principle of national honor. It is adefense of certain ideal or fictitious values in which nations insist that others should recognize these claims and values. National honor is an artifice for defending a claim to superiority and concealing an actual inferiority, and it relates to values which, in general, do not exist. Its work is concerned with the maintenance of prestige.
These ideal values and the integrity of the appearance of supremacy, are sustained by the assumption of the forms of empire or the imperialistic attitude. Empire is indeed what is dramatized in the forms which nations assume, and this dramatization of imperial form is the background of all the ideas of honor. The maintenance of the integrity of the imperial form, as an ideal realization of the supremacy a nation assumes, becomes more important than even the securing of material possessions, for the imperial form is the very reality and existence of the nation. It is at bottom merely the assertion that its own mores are supreme and entitled to be universal. To admit that this is not so would be to become to some extent unreal, and to lose something essential to a sense of personality. Therefore, there can be thus far no intimate relations among nations. They must present to one another symbolic representations of themselves. It is their flag, the symbol of their place in the world and of their military prowess and courage; their ambassadors, the representatives of their dignity and the symbol of their pretended friendliness; their display of royal forms, which is the sign of their prestige and their imperial nature, about which they are most sensitive. Offenses to these symbols of what a nation assumes itself to be and demands that others should think it, tend to bemortaloffenses, because they invade the sphere of what nations hold to be their reality. So the relations of nations to one another must, as we say, always be formal. Nations can allow no intimacy. Why they cannot one can readily see, for it is not difficult to detect the fear, the jealousy, and the inferiority motive behind all this assumption anddisplay. Treitschke shows us what national honor may mean when it is carried out into a philosophy of state. Here is the idea of national self-consciousness at its greatest height. The state must not tolerate equals, or at least it must reduce the number of equals as much as possible. The state must be absolutely independent. The state, furthermore, cannot have too keen a sense of its dignity and position. A state must declare war if its flag is insulted, however slight the circumstances may be.
National honor, its codes and standards and its justification and vindication by combat, present so many resemblances to the practice of dueling and the idea of personal honor once so generally held by the upper class, and still existent where the military spirit prevails, that we ought to study the dueling code with reference to the psychology of war. There are psychological features that appear to be identical. The idea of personal honor is associated with a feeling of superiority that must be defended. Any offense or affront to the individual was a mortal offense. The superiority in question was first of all superiority of ancestry; it was this that constituted the value of the individual and set the standards that he must maintain. This superiority was to be judged not so much by conduct as by an assertion of it represented by certain external forms. The individual by his manners declared himself a gentleman, and laid claim to forms and considerations that must not be omitted in relations with him. The virtues he defended so rigorously did not exist as a rule in calculable or practical form, since they did nothing objective. They might be ornamental or purely fictitious. They existed in the form of claims, and the values assigned to them were arbitrary. The man declared himself possessed of superiority, and was ready uniformly to prove this claim by acts purporting to indicate willingness to die.
This code and belief belonged to a day when relations among individuals were simple and, so to speak, external.They were relations that were readily codified and made invariable, since they had no essential practical content or function. Manners were significant as substitutes for friendly relations, since the system was lacking in moral and social sentiments. Manners were a means of fitting together individuals who really belonged to no functioning whole, except when, for example, they might be united in military exploits. Everything was unitary and independent of everything else in this society.
Now this code and this philosophy of life have declined precisely to the extent that the conception of ideal human life has changed, from that of something ornamental and personal to that of something useful and moral. Life has become organized, and relations have become more practical, so that the values of conduct may now be estimated, and one no longer may maintain a claim to virtue based upon forms expressing intangible or subjective or unreal virtues. The virtues of a man in a democratic society are, indeed, more or less obvious and open. Pride of family, an ornamental mode of life, and a scorn of death are no longer necessary and sufficient guarantees of worth. Evidence of value is both possible and required; before value is admitted it must be shown. Self-defense in a legal and moral society are in the main superfluous, and the values of individuals are so changed that to justify them by the duel would seem out of place. Its service being to defend artificial or arbitrary claims to distinction, it ceases or it falls into disuse when the individual's reality and value come to depend upon his functional place in society. It would be highly illogical to put to test social values by a process that appears to have nothing but anti-social elements in it.
That nations exhibit the same type of relation toward one another that we find in dueling and its code seems to be clear, although we must always avoid pressing any analogy between individual and nation too far. A claim to superiority that is deep and irrational, and which appears onthe surface as sensitiveness in regard to honor and vanity, keeps nations always in defensive attitudes, quite apart from the actual fear of aggression. This superficiality or at least externality of relations is the source of actual conflict. The forms employed to maintain these relations are obviously ornamental, are elaborations of the forms of courtesy among individuals, are little dramas of friendship, so to speak, little plays representing friendliness, while the diplomatic motives are simply to obtain everything possible, each nation for itself, without war, and to maintain prestige. These relations are substitutes for social feelings that do not exist. Generally speaking, nations are never friends. They never really share in anything. They are all highly conscious of their own prestige and dignity, and they always communicate with one another in a formal way. In it all, we see the signs of emotions and habits that extend far back to the beginnings of social life and indeed into animal life. The display which takes the form of social relations among nations, represented well by uniformed diplomats, is so plainly archaic and its real meaning so obvious that we can hardly fail to understand what it is all about. That the attitude is really defensive, and the purpose to keep up appearances before strangers, so to speak, can hardly be doubted.
The fact that these questions of national honor are in some respects detached from the main realities ofpolitical relations, and are, indeed, fictitious and exist in the region of the imagination, that they pertain to the conventional and ornamental sides of national life, might be supposed to indicate that they could easily be done away with, and all these fertile causes of war be eliminated. That must not be assumed. Vanity has deep roots. The ornamental in life symbolizes the real. It is the point of entrance to the deepest motives. Conventional and archaic forms do not die out, just because we discover that they are irrational and harmful, and the causes they serve seem to us to beunreal. This kind of unreality in the consciousness of nations is in fact the ideal for which nations live. Nations play at being great, and fight to defend their prestige—but this play, as we know, is oftentimes terribly real.