, but pertaining more to the animal
than to the civilised man; the other is an authority governing by laws,
imposing obligations, and giving a moral sanction and character to the
natural relations of society. Patriotism is in political life what faith
is in religion, and it stands to the domestic feelings and to
home-sickness as faith to fanaticism and to superstition. It has one
aspect derived from private life and nature, for it is an extension of
the family affections, as the tribe is an extension of the family. But
in its real political character, patriotism consists in the development
of the instinct of self-preservation into a moral duty which may involve
self-sacrifice. Self-preservation is both an instinct and a duty,
natural and involuntary in one respect, and at the same time a moral
obligation. By the first it produces the family; by the last the State.
If the nation could exist without the State, subject only to the
instinct of self-preservation, it would be incapable of denying,
controlling, or sacrificing itself; it would be an end and a rule to
itself. But in the political order moral purposes are realised and
public ends are pursued to which private interests and even existence
must be sacrificed. The great sign of true patriotism, the development
of selfishness into sacrifice, is the product of political life. That
sense of duty which is supplied by race is not entirely separated from
its selfish and instinctive basis; and the love of country, like married
love, stands at the same time on a material and a moral foundation. The
patriot must distinguish between the two causes or objects of his
devotion. The attachment which is given only to the country is like
obedience given only to the State--a submission to physical influences.
The man who prefers his country before every other duty shows the same
spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the State. They both
deny that right is superior to authority.
There is a moral and political country, in the language of Burke,
distinct from the geographical, which may be possibly in collision with
it The Frenchmen who bore arms against the Convention were as patriotic
as the Englishmen who bore arms against King Charles, for they
recognised a higher duty than that of obedience to the actual
sovereign. "In an address to France," said Burke, "in an attempt to
treat with it, or in considering any scheme at all relative to it, it is
impossible we should mean th
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