Your Gentiles
instance, country, the distinction between love and loyalty is startlingly clear. Love of country is a profound spiritual quality: it may go hand in hand with a dangerous and exalted morality. But loyalty merely says: "My country must triumph in all her undertakings, whether they be right or wrong"—or, rather, "There is no such thing as 'my country wrong.'" And in loyalty to king, class, or church, the same distinction or substitution is observed. Loyalty is a rigid code of behavior—not an emotion.
But the real nature of loyalty is only seen in its application to those relationships which are much more fortuitous than those of country, church, class. In these loyalty is clearly revealed as a fictitious and artificial regulation, with no roots in moral conviction. Let us take the case of a young man who is faced with a choice of college. He may have preferences, but there is no compelling association which identifies him with any one institution. The choice is decided finally by some quite irrelevant influence: he goes to any one
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