little if any
effectual sense of nationality; their patriotism appears to be nearly a
negligible quantity. This would appear to an outsider to have been their
besetting weakness, to which their successful subjection by various and
sundry ambitious aliens has been due. But it appears also to have been
the infirmity by grace of which this people have been obliged to learn
the ways of submission, and so have had the fortune to outlive their
alien masters, all and sundry, and to occupy the land and save the
uncontaminated integrity of their long-lived civilisation.

* * * * *

Some account of the nature and uses of this spirit of patriotism that is
held of so great account among Western nations has already been set out
in an earlier passage. One or two points in the case, that bear on the
argument here, may profitably be recalled. The patriotic spirit, or the
tie of nationalism, is evidently of the nature of habit, whatever
proclivity to the formation of such a habit may be native to mankind.
More particularly is it a matter of habit--it might even be called a
matter of fortuitous habit--what particular national establishment a
given human subject will become attached to on reaching what is called
"years of discretion" and so becoming a patriotic citizen.

The analogy of the clam may not be convincing, but it may at least serve
to suggest what may be the share played by habituation in the matter of
national attachment. The young clam, after having passed the
free-swimming phase of his life, as well as the period of attachment to
the person of a carp or similar fish, drops to the bottom and attaches
himself loosely in the place and station in life to which he has been
led; and he loyally sticks to his particular patch of ooze and sand
through good fortune and evil. It is, under Providence, something of a
fortuitous matter where the given clam shall find a resting place for
the sole of his foot, but it is also, after all, "his own, his native
land" etc. It lies in the nature of a clam to attach himself after this
fashion, loosely, to the bottom where he finds a living, and he would
not be a "good clam and true" if he failed to do so; but the particular
spot for which he forms this attachment is not of the essence of the
case. At least, so they say.

It may be, as good men appear to believe or know, that all men of sound,
or at least those of average, mind will necessarily be of a patriotic
t