Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/259

 PATRIOTISM AND GOVERNMENT 248

In this, it seems to me, lies the explanation of the strange contrast between the antiquated patriotic idea, and that whole drift of ideas making in a contrary direc- tion, which have already entered into the consciousness of the Christian world.

Patriotism, as a feeling of exclusive love for one's own people, and as a doctrine of the virtue of sacrificing one's tranquillity, one's property, and even one's life, in defence of one's own people from slaughter and outrage by their enemies, was the highest idea of the period when each nation considered it feasible and just, for its own advantage, to subject to slaughter and outrage the people of other nations.

But, already some 2,000 years ago, humanity, in the person of the highest representatives of its wisdom, began to recognise the higher idea of a brotherhood of man ; and that idea, penetrating man's consciousness more and more, has m our time attained most varied forms of realization. Thanks to improved means of communication, and to the unity of industry, of trade, of the arts, and of science, men are to-day so bound one to another that the danger of conquest, massacre, or outrage by a neighbouring people, has quite disappeared, and all peoples (the peoples, but not the Governments) live together in peaceful, mutually advantageous, and friendly commercial, industrial, artistic, and scientific relations, which they have no need and no desire to disturb. One would think, therefore, that the antiquated feeling of patriotism — being superfluous and incompatible with the conscious- ness we have reached of the existence of brotherhood among men of different nationalities — should dwindle more and more until it completely disappears. Yet the very opposite of this occurs : this harmful and anti- quated feeling not only continues to exist, but burns more and more fiercely.

o 2