ot entered as a result of
reflection and choice. A man is born into the nation as into the
family. To belong to the English nation when born an Englishman is not
usually considered so "greatly to his credit," except in the case of
Mr. Gilbert's naval hero. The very term "naturalize," with which we
denote the initiation of a foreigner, is a confession that the nation
is not a social contract but a natural relation. It is this natural
relation which makes the nation worth dying for; it is fatherland.

Still further, the nation is an organic being. The scattered atoms of
a sand-heap are as perfect as before they were dislodged; not so an
amputated arm. When the nation is disunited, the detached segment
becomes a different kind of body. "The man without a country" begins
to be another sort of man. The nation is not a mass of independent
individuals, but of related individuals, who, moreover, are so closely
related that they make together an indivisible organism; this organism
develops according to orderly laws; this organism has perpetuity,
never disjoining itself either from its past or future; and this
organism has also self-consciousness and moral personality. This is
the nation in which we live, and move, and have our being.

When we look this high conception of the nation squarely in the eye,
much of the talk about governmentalism seems at once irrelevant. For
government in America must ever mean the nation directing itself. Here
are no hereditary governing machines; no bureaucracies created by a
power apart from the people. In Europe, government is fastened on the
people. But in America, if government is not of the people, by the
people, and for the people, it is their own fault. The worst abuses of
power in a government actually emanating from the people, do not put
it beyond their reach. It is still the nation governing itself. It
will one day become conscious of its strength, and will direct its
efforts more wisely. But so long as it is the living, organic nation
governing itself, no mere multiplication of functions, no
straightforward increase of powers, are a discrowning of the people.

Socialists believe in the fearless extension of government because
they have a clear and high idea of the nation as an organic
relationship, apart from which the individual cannot realize himself.
As the nation becomes more self-conscious, it perceives more clearly
its own responsibility for the development of each individual. T