Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/332

320 loyalty, is after all a make-shift idea, ... and loyalty, in any proper sense, to the nation as such is so much of a make-believe, that in the absence of a common defence to be safeguarded any such patriotic conceit must lose popular assurance and, with the passing of generations, fall insensibly into abeyance as an archaic affectation" (p. 140). "The Spanish-American war, which was made in America, or the Boer war, which was made in England" (p. 204, cf. also p. 3). "So soon, or rather so far, as the common man comes to realize that these rights of ownership and investment uniformly work to his material detriment, at the same time that he has lost the 'will to believe' in any argument that does not run in terms of the mechanistic logic, it is reasonable to expect that he will take a stand on this matter. ... And as happens where two antagonistic parties are each convinced of the justice of its cause, the logical recourse is the wager of battle" (pp. 364-365).

This string of sentences is not intended to give a summary of the author's views—which are commonplace enough at the present day among a certain school of writers but the sentences are quoted as an illustration of how the facts of historical and individual experiences appear when looked at from a particular point of view, and in the light of certain assumptions that seem self-evident to an economic rationalist. It is not easy to state systematically this "whole nest of assumptions," but the center of them all seems to be the dogma that material goods, or goods incapable of being shared without loss, form the only rational and enduring ends of human endeavor. Other 'irrational' motives must indeed be recognized, such as 'patriotism,' but these are only incidentally induced habits, and in time, as man becomes better educated, their influence may be expected to decline. This of course leads directly to the view of society as composed of exclusive units, and to the dualism and opposition of classes which determine the nature of all social and political problems for this school of thinkers. These oppositions are made so absolute that for the author the view of the whole is lost. He sets the ruling classes over against the ruled, the leisure or gentleman class over against the workers, and finally, as the bottomless-pit dualism, we have the property class and the propertyless. In consequence, he is unable to think, or even to appreciate in terms of feeling, the value of the state as a unity with its instinctive rationality expressing itself in a whole system of unreflecting loyalties. Of the actual achievements of historical movements, which are just 'reason taking its time,' he is equally insensible. Of course, these things are foolishness to the abstract thinker sitting apart from real life, whose view of 'human nature' is constructed out of schematically conceived 'factors,' and who leaves out of account the one feature that makes life human and reasonable—viz., its capacity to overcome oppositions and reconcile antagonisms through its own internal growth and development. He is so engrossed with the struggle of the economic classes that he is unable to see any political whole or to find any 'rational' justification for patriotic feelings. Thus he has no faith in historical development, but proposes to cure the ills of society by a specific rationalistic prescription. The limitations of the abstract planning