Page:Tolstoy - Christianity and Patriotism.djvu/83

 Turkey. But apart from men of these several subject nationalities, the men of the most homogeneous states, such as Russia, France, and Prussia, cannot feel the sentiment of patriotism peculiar to the ancient world because very often all the chief interests of their lives (sometimes domestic, when a man's wife is of another nation; sometimes economic, when his capital is invested abroad; sometimes spiritual, scientific, or artistic) are not in their own country, but outside it, in the state against which their patriotic hatred is excited.

Above all, patriotism is impossible nowadays, because however we may have tried during eighteen hundred years to conceal the meaning of Christianity, it has nevertheless permeated into our life, and so far guides it that even the coarsest and most stupid people cannot help seeing now the complete incompatibility of patriotism with the moral principles by which they live.