52 National Life 



can be made by our kin, by our countrymen, 

 by Europeans, by Chinamen, by Negroes and 

 by Kaffirs, by animals, may not be clearly de- 

 fined ; but, on the average, they admit of rough 

 graduation, and we find in practice, whatever 

 be our fine philosophies, that the instinct to 

 self-sacrifice wanes as we go down in the 

 scale. 



The man who tells us that he feels to all 

 men alike, that he has no sense of kinship, 

 that he has no patriotic sentiment, that he 

 loves the Kaffir as he loves his brother, is 

 probably deceiving himself. If he is not, 

 then all we can say is that a nation of such 

 men, or even a nation with a large minority 

 of such men, will not stand for many genera- 

 tions ; it cannot survive in the struggle of the 

 nations, it cannot be a factor in the contest 

 upon which human progress ultimately de- 

 pends. The national spirit is not a thing to 

 be ashamed of, as the educated man seems 

 occasionally to hold. If that spirit be the 

 mere excrescence of the music-hall, or an 

 ignorant assertion of superiority to the 

 foreigner, it may be ridiculous, it may even be 

 nationally dangerous ; but if the national 



