We need today new principles. We can reform and reform but all this is on the surface. What we have got to do is to change some of the fundamental ideas of our American life. This is not being disloyal to our past, it is exactly the opposite. Let us be loyal to our inheritance and tradition, but let us understand what that inheritance and tradition truly is. It is not our tradition to stick to an outworn past, a conventional ideal, a rigid religion. We are children of men who have not been afraid of new continents or new ideas. In our blood is the impulse to leap to the highest we can see, as the wills of our fathers fixed themselves on the convictions of their hearts. To spring forward and then to follow the path steadfastly is forever the duty of Americans. We must live democracy.
XXXV
The World State
We have seen the true state emerging through the working of the federal principle, dual in its nature: (1) created by the law of interpenetration, the unifying of difference, and (2) representing the multiple man in his essential nature. Through the further working of this principle the world-state appears.
The lesson of the group is imperative for our international relations. No “alliances,” no balance of power, no agreements, no Hague tribunals will now satisfy us; we know that it is only by creating a genuine community of nations that we can have stability and growth—world peace, world progress. What are the contributions of group psychology to the League of Nations?
There is no way out of the hell of our present European situation until we find a method of compounding difference. Superficial moralists try to get us to like some other nationality by emphasizing all the things we have in common, but war can never cease until we see the value of differences, that they are to be maintained not blotted out. The white-man’s burden is not to make others like himself. As we see the value of the individual, of every individual, so we must see the value of each nation, that all are needed. The pacifists have wanted us to tolerate our enemies and the more extreme ones to turn the other cheek when smitten. But tolerance is intolerable. And we cannot dwell among enemies. The ideal of this planet inhabited by Christian enemies all turning the cheek does not seem to me a happy one. We must indeed, as the extreme militarists tell us, “wipe out” our enemies, but we do not wipe out our enemies by crushing them. The old-fashioned hero went out to conquer his enemy; the modern hero goes out to disarm his enemy through creating a mutual understanding.
The failure of international society in the past is a fact fraught with deep significance: the differences between nations are not to be overcome by one class of people in a country uniting with the same class in another country. The upper classes of Petrograd, Berlin, Paris and London have very much the same manners and habits. This has not brought peace. Artists the world over have a common language. Workingmen have tried to break down international barriers by assuming that their interests were so identical that they could unite across these barriers. But this has failed to bring peace as the other rapprochements have failed. Why? Because they are all on the wrong track. International peace is never coming by an increase of similarities (this is the old-fashioned crowd-philosophy); international peace is coming by the frankest and fullest kind of recognition of our differences. Internationalism and cosmopolitanism must not be confused. The aim of cosmopolitanism is for all to be alike; the aim of internationalism is a rich content of widely varying characteristic and experience.
If it were true that we ought to increase the likenesses between nations, then it would be legitimate for each nation to try to impose its ideals upon others. In that case England would try to spread her particular brand of civilization, and Germany hers, for if some one kind of civilization has to prevail, each will want it to be his own. There is not room on this planet for a lot of similar nations, but only for a lot of different nations. A group of nations must create a group culture which shall be broader than the culture of one nation alone. There must be a world-ideal, a whole-civilization, in which the ideals and the civilization of every nation can find a place. The ideal of one nation is not antagonistic to the ideal of another, nor do these ideals exist in a row side by side, but these different kinds of civilization are bound up in one another. I am told that this is mysticism. It is the most practical idea I have found in the world.
It is said that a mighty struggle is before us by-and-by when East meets West, and in that shock will be decided which of these civilizations shall rule the world—that this is to be the great world-decision. No, the great world-decision is that each nation needs equally every other, therefore each will not only protect, but foster and increase the other that thereby it may increase its own stature.
Perhaps one of the most useful lessons to be learned from the group process is a new definition of patriotism. Patriotism must not be herd-instinct. Patriotism must be the
