The smaller social group, firmly united in itself and dwelling apart from others, tends to withdraw itself from the larger society.  Every patriot hates foreigners; they are only men, and nothing to him.[Footnote:  Thus the wars of republics are more cruel than those of monarchies.  But if the wars of kings are less cruel, their peace is terrible; better be their foe than their subject.] This defect is inevitable, but of little importance.  The great thing is to be kind to our neighbours.  Among strangers the Spartan was selfish, grasping, and unjust, but unselfishness, justice, and harmony ruled his home life.  Distrust those cosmopolitans who search out remote duties in their books and neglect those that lie nearest.  Such philosophers will love the Tartars to avoid loving their neighbour.

The natural man lives for himself; he is the unit, the whole, dependent only on himself and on his like.  The citizen is but the numerator of a fraction, whose value depends on its denominator; his value depends upon the whole, that is, on the community.  Good social institutions are those best fitted to make a man unnatural, to exchange his independence for dependence, to merge the unit in the group, so that he no longer regards himself as one, but as a part of the whole, and is only conscious of the common life.  A citizen of Rome was neither Caius nor Lucius, he was a Roman; he ever loved his country better than his life.  The captive Regulus professed himself a Carthaginian; as a foreigner he refused to take his seat in the Senate except at his master’s bidding.  He scorned the attempt to save his life.  He had his will, and returned in triumph to a cruel death.  There is no great likeness between Regulus and the men of our own day.

The Spartan Pedaretes presented himself for admission to the council of the Three Hundred and was rejected; he went away rejoicing that there were three hundred Spartans better than himself.  I suppose he was in earnest; there is no reason to doubt it.  That was a citizen.

A Spartan mother had five sons with the army.  A Helot arrived; trembling she asked his news.  “Your five sons are slain.”  “Vile slave, was that what I asked thee?” “We have won the victory.”  She hastened to the temple to render thanks to the gods.  That was a citizen.

He who would preserve the supremacy of natural feelings in social life knows not what he asks.  Ever at war with himself, hesitating between his wishes and his duties, he will be neither a man nor a citizen.  He will be of no use to himself nor to others.  He will be a man of our day, a Frenchman, an Englishman, one of the great middle class.

To be something, to be himself, and always at one with himself, a man must act as he speaks, must know what course he ought to take, and must follow that course with vigour and persistence.  When I meet this miracle it will be time enough to decide whether he is a man or a citizen, or how he contrives to be both.