MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
89 
if it becomes evident that they are psychologically inevitable, and it 
seems to me that the indications are so clear that he who runs may 
read, even though he be the Czar of all the Russias. 
Tlie beginning has already been made in Sweden and Norway. Here 
were two countries with similar people, language, traditions and 
geography, but Norway felt a restraint on its individuality and in 11)05 
there was a peaceable disunion. My Swedish cousin had not visited 
Norway before this time, and she expresses an attitude commonly held 
when she assumes that she can never go now and retain her self respect. 
These two countries are both very democratic with a very large socialist 
vote, but a Swede is a Swede, and a Norwegian is a Norwegian first. 
The case of Finland is rather more complex. For six and a half cen- 
turies the Finns were subjects of Sweden, but in 1809 their country be- 
came a possession of Russia, and the efforts at russification have been 
continuous. The population is eighty-five per cent Finnish and twelve 
T>er cent Swedish. The culture has been continuously Swedish. I 
found last summer that at the University of Helsingfors where twenty- 
five years ago all the work was done in Swedish, now more that half 
of it is in Finnish, and the Finnish spirit is increasing by leaps and 
bounds. Seven and a half centuries of Swedish culture with no Finnish 
education has had no effect except to stimulate the growth of Finnish 
national feeling. The two people live amicable together. The Swedes 
and Russians conduct most of the business and have the social standing, 
both Finns and Swedes are Lutheran and in the official church the ser- 
vices alternate in the two languages. Finland is very democratic — - 
equal suffrage has prevailed for some time. Socialism has been very 
strong among them. In Chicago they have the largest proportional 
membership in the party of any of the foreigners. Rut in Finland the 
socialist votes are beginning to diminish slightly. The children in school 
must study Swedish, Finnish and Russian, and the government is 
thoroughly Russian, but there are absolutely no signs of assimilation. 
Helsingfors, and the other Finnish cities I visited are much more like 
Detroit than like St. Petersburg, though Russia has been working a full 
-century upon them. 
It is very near a paradox that this movement towards national in- 
dividualism, and the socialistic movement should arise from almost 
the same motive. Whatever may be our fears about the loss of indi- 
viduality in a socialistic state, there is no doubt but that many people 
embrace it as a revolt against having their individuality swallowed up 
by the oppression of those who hold the power through more or less un- 
just economic conditions. They feel the artificiality of the conditions. 
In like manner this national feeling is a revolt against an oppression. 
And since one’s individuality is so largely social in its source the nearest 
and dearest thing to the heart of a man is that social group in which 
he identifies his spiritual reality. Both movements are conspicuously 
unselfisli, and the devotion to them is distinctly religious in its char- 
acter. But they become antagonistic — one puts up boundaries which 
the other tries to pull down. Nationalism tends to look backward and 
socialism forward. Both movements thrive in the same country and are 
beginning to be recognized as more or less hostile to each other. We 
have had nothing conspicuous of the kind in this country because it has 
not had a chance to develop. But in those countries in Europe where 
