Political Ideals eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 78 pages of information about Political Ideals.

Political Ideals eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 78 pages of information about Political Ideals.

What is to be desired is not cosmopolitanism, not the absence of all national characteristics that one associates with couriers, wagon-lit attendants, and others, who have had everything distinctive obliterated by multiple and trivial contacts with men of every civilized country.  Such cosmopolitanism is the result of loss, not gain.  The international spirit which we should wish to see produced will be something added to love of country, not something taken away.  Just as patriotism does not prevent a man from feeling family affection, so the international spirit ought not to prevent a man from feeling affection for his own country.  But it will somewhat alter the character of that affection.  The things which he will desire for his own country will no longer be things which can only be acquired at the expense of others, but rather those things in which the excellence of any one country is to the advantage of all the world.  He will wish his own country to be great in the arts of peace, to be eminent in thought and science, to be magnanimous and just and generous.  He will wish it to help mankind on the way toward that better world of liberty and international concord which must be realized if any happiness is to be left to man.  He will not desire for his country the passing triumphs of a narrow possessiveness, but rather the enduring triumph of having helped to embody in human affairs something of that spirit of brotherhood which Christ taught and which the Christian churches have forgotten.  He will see that this spirit embodies not only the highest morality, but also the truest wisdom, and the only road by which the nations, torn and bleeding with the wounds which scientific madness has inflicted, can emerge into a life where growth is possible and joy is not banished at the frenzied call of unreal and fictitious duties.  Deeds inspired by hate are not duties, whatever pain and self-sacrifice they may involve.  Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.

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Political Ideals from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.