country are nearer and more needful to their neighbours than are these latter to one another, as in the case of labourers in the service of foreign employers of labour, of commercial houses, scientists and the followers of art.
Moreover, the very conditions of life are now so changed, that what we call fatherland, and which we are asked to distinguish from everything else, has ceased to be clearly defined, as with the ancients, when men of the same country were of one nationality one state, and one religion.
The patriotism of an Egyptian, a Jew, a Greek is comprehensible who in defending his country defended his religion, his nationality, his fatherland, and his state.
But in what terms can one express to-day the patriotism of an Irishman in the United States, who by his religion belongs to Rome, by his nationality, to Ireland, by his citizenship to the United States? In the same position is a Bohemian in Austria, a Pole in Russia, Prussia, or Austria; a Hindoo, in England; a Tartar or Armenian in Russia or Turkey. Not to mention the people of these particular conquered nations, the people of the most homogeneous countries, Russia, France, Prussia, can no longer possess the sentiment of patriotism which was natural to the ancients, because very often the chief interests of their lives—of the family, for instance, where a man is married to a woman of another nationality—commercial, where his capital is invested abroad; spiritual, scientific or artistic—are no longer contained within the limits of his country, but outside it, in the very State, perhaps, against which his patriotic animosity is being excited.
But patriotism is chiefly impossible to-day, because, however much we may have endeavoured during 1800 years to conceal the meaning of Christianity, it has nevertheless leaked into our lives, and controls them to such an extent that the dullest and most unrefined of men must see to-day the complete nonconformity of patriotism with the moral law by which we live.
XIV.
Patriotism was a necessity in the formation and consolidation of powerful States composed of different nationalities and acting in mutual defence against barbarians. But as soon as Christian enlightenment transformed these States from within, giving to all an equal standing, patriotism became not only needless, but the
