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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



fanaticism can be, barring improvement and 

 prompting injustice. Here, too, so far as Chris- 

 tianity does inculcate the doctrine of a wider 

 brotherhood than mere nationality, and strike at 

 such patriotism as this, it is doing good service 

 to mankind. But the truth is, that its efforts in 

 this direction, especially among the nations which 

 need amendment most, such as Russia and Spain, 

 are unspeakably feeble, owing in no little meas- 

 ure to lack of the higher culture among religious 

 teachers. What is perhaps even more remark- 

 able is the intense chauvinisme of the only seri- 

 ous attempt which has been made in recent times 

 to provide a new and improved creed to supplant 

 Christianity. No one can attentively study the 

 Positivist religion of humanity, as conceived aDd 

 expounded by M. Auguste Comte, without recog- 

 nizing through every disguise the Parisian cock- 

 ney, whose one article of belief is, " II n'y a 

 qu'un Paris, et hors Paris il n'y a pas de salut 

 pour les gens comme il faut." A new Paul of 

 Tarsus, to teach the neophytes of the new creed 

 that it is not essential for them to become 

 Frenchmen of the boulevards in their institu- 

 tions and habits of thought before they can be ad- 

 mitted to the Positivist equivalent for salvation, 

 would be just as necessary as the first Paul was to 

 rescue Christianity from the fetters of which the 

 Judaizing faction endeavored to impose upon it. 

 This is the more noteworthy because Positivism, 

 by declining to consider the possibility of a future 

 life, and therefore concentrating all moral effort 

 on the present world, might be thought exactly 

 the system which would promote either a lofty 

 form of patriotism, or an uncalculating recogni- 

 tion of the universal brotherhood of man. But 

 its primary condition of Frenchifying everything 

 and everybody is clearly incompatible with ei- 

 ther, because it is not content, as Christianity was 

 and is, with laying down first principles, and let- 

 tin"; the nations work them out according to their 

 several bias and capacity. For it insists, like 

 Islam, on providing all alike with the same ready- 

 made code, and that with a permanent assump- 

 tion of superiority for the nation where that code 

 arose, which, to do Islam justice, it does not 

 claim for the Arabs, since under it a negro con- 

 vert is practically put on a social and religious 

 level with the purest blooded scion of the Beni- 

 Ismael ; one reason, as Prof. Blyden has taught 

 us, for its missionary success in Africa, as com- 

 pared with the slow progress of Christianity. 



It will be again urged, by the champions of 

 the proposition combated in this paper, that all 

 that has been said so far is still beside the ques- 



tion, because the patriotism for whose practice 

 they are contending is not that national self-suffi- 

 ciency which has borne so much bitter fruit. 

 But if they choose — as they do choose for the 

 most part — to state their objections to Christian- 

 ity in a wholly unrestricted fashion, they must 

 expect to have their costs taxed. It is not to be 

 disputed that the faulty ideas of patriotism cen- 

 sured above have played, and do play, a far larger 

 part in the history of nations than more defen- 

 sible and philosophical notions have done, and it 

 is leasonable to show that Christianity errs by 

 defect, rather than by excess, in its resistance to 

 such wide-spread and powerful errors, and to ask 

 for a more precise definition of that salutary kind 

 of patriotism which is assumed to be injuriously 

 affected by theology. 



That some kind of patriotic feeling is neces- 

 sary for the very existence and security of nations, 

 and for their healthy development, no thinker 

 will dispute. A country whose citizens are care- 

 less of its dignity and its strength, courts and 

 invites insult and invasion, hurtfully stimulates 

 the lust of conquest in foreign states, and in- 

 directly occasions the commission of great crimes 

 against humanity, almost as guiltily as if it em- 

 barked itself into an unjust war of aggression. 

 A country whose citizens are from habit or fac- 

 tion indifferent to social improvement, will lag 

 behind in all that constitutes good government 

 and national well-being ; and the true patriot is 

 he who will take active measures to secure for 

 his country the blessings of honorable peace 

 abroad, and of healthy administration at home. 

 It may be added that he will also strive to rectify 

 practices which militate against the honor and 

 reputation of his country, even when they seem 

 to make for its material interests. That little 

 group of Englishmen who never rested till slave- 

 holding and slave-trading were made unlawful for 

 British citizens, were surely patriotic in a very 

 noble fashion ; and American and Spanish states- 

 men, who should have set themselves to resist 

 the policy of financial repudiation, would have 

 done far more for the honor and the true advan- 

 tage of their countries than those did who caught 

 eagerly at the temporary gains of national dis- 

 honesty. And, in like manner, the truest friends 

 of their country will not shrink from urging the 

 repeal of home measures, thought liberal and 

 popular, if really hurtful to society (like the 

 Divorce Act among ourselves), or from recom- 

 mending and adopting improvements borrowed 

 from foreign institutions, even at the risk of being 

 denounced as unpatriotic for such eclecticism. 



