This is not the place to attempt a psychological analysis of
patriotism, but we may at least try to enumerate the principal factors
in it, and say what we think patriotism as a virtue--or a vice--is.
_Patriotism in our view is normally loyalty to country as a
functioning unit in a world of nations. It is devotion to all the
aspects and functions of a country as an historical entity._ We must
think of these historical entities, moreover, as leading lives in
which, although their own ambitions for honor and greatness are
legitimate, there must be a practical recognition of the legitimacy of
similar interests on the part of all other nations, and in which the
recognition of the common interests of nations is also freely made.
Since nations perform no one single function and have no single motive
of life in their normal state, patriotism can be no devotion to a
single purpose or cause. Such patriotism as this, we may say, does not
antagonize internationalism. Loyalty to country is loyalty to the
functions and interests that properly belong to country. The
individual, the family, the country and all intervening groups and
entities are natural formations. To each of these entities there is
due a loyalty precisely measured by the character of the functions
which these entities perform.

This view of patriotism is plainly, both in its theoretical aspect and
its practical consequences, widely different from those that end in
pure internationalism. Its essential feature is that it recognizes the
validity of all entities and groups about which deep feeling has grown
up. This means, of course, that as criteria of social values these
feelings are placed ahead of certain logical or scientific
considerations. Pure internationalism of the intellectual type
recognizes the validity only of the whole world group. Nicolai, for
example, says that there is a morality and there are rights pertaining
to the individual and to the whole of humanity, but all intervening
groups are temporary and artificial. That, certainly, we should not
agree with. The coming greater cooerdination of the world we may
suppose will deepen and intensify patriotism, rather than diminish it.
The homogeneity toward which the biologists tell us we are tending and
ought to approach is one in which, it is likely, still sharper
national outlines may well appear. The ambitions, the functions, and
the culture of nations ought to be made clearer rather than be lost in
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