logical basis, are extremely inconsistent one with another, and have been almost complete failures.
3. There are no pure races in Europe. Less than any other nation have the Germans a right to claim racial purity.[1] Anyone who seeks a true Teuton to-day had better go to Sweden, the Netherlands, or England.
4. If to the term race we attach a definite biological meaning, we can hardly say that there is any such thing as a European race.
Patriotism based on race is impossible, and in most cases it is utterly absurd. There is no such thing as ethnic homogeneity in any extant nation. The cohesion of contemporary nations does not come down to them as a heritage of which they can dispose at will. From day to day this cohesion must be rewon. Unremittingly the members of each nation must fortify their community of thought, feeling, and will. This is meet and right. As Renan said, “The existence of a nation should be a daily plebiscite.” In a word, what unites people to form a nation is not the force of history; it is the desire to be together, and the mutual need felt by the members of the nation. Our thoughts and our feelings are not guided by the vows that others have made for us, but by our own free will.
Is it so to-day? What place does free will hold among the nations of to-day? Patriotism has assumed an extraordinarily oppressive form. During no other age in history has it been so tyrannical and so exclusive. It devours everything. Our country, to-day, claims to rank above religion, above art, science, thought, above civilisation. This monstrous hypertrophy cannot be explained as an efflux from the natural sources of patriotic instincts, as an efflux of love of the native soil, of tribal sentiment, of the social need for forming vast communities. Its colossal effects are the outcome of a pathological phenomenon; they are the outcome of mass suggestion. Nicolai tersely analyses this conception. It is remarkable, he says, that whenever several animals or several human beings do any-
- ↑ On p. 255 [of the English edition] will be found an ethnographical chart of Germany. It is distinctly humorous.
