bbles and arguments, their fallacies drawn from
so-called precedents or from so-called economic and ethnic necessity;
for the simple, brutal and magnificent cry of life renders useless the
efforts they make to galvanize and erect doctrines which cannot stand
alone. The disapproval which attaches in our time to the word
"internationalism" proves together the silliness and meanness of public
opinion. Humanity is the living name of truth. Men are like each
other as trees! They who rule well, rule by force and deceit; but by
reason, never.

The national group is a collectivity within the bosom of the chief one.
It is one group like any other; it is like him who knots himself to
himself under the wing of a roof, or under the wider wing of the sky
that dyes a landscape blue. It is not the definite, absolute, mystical
group into which they would fain transform it, with sorcery of words
and ideas, which they have armored with oppressive rules. Everywhere
man's poor hope of salvation on earth is merely to attain, at the end
of his life, this: To live one's life freely, where one wants to live
it; to love, to last, to produce in the chosen environment--just as the
people of the ancient Provinces have lost, along with their separate
leaders, their separate traditions of covetousness and reciprocal
robbery.

If, from the idea of motherland, you take away covetousness, hatred,
envy and vainglory; if you take away from it the desire for
predominance by violence, what is there left of it?

It is not an individual unity of laws; for just laws have no colors.
It is not a solidarity of interests, for there are no material national
interests--or they are not honest. It is not a unity of race; for the
map of the countries is not the map of the races. What is there left?

There is left a restricted communion, deep and delightful; the
affectionate and affecting attraction in the charm of a language--there
is hardly more in the universe besides its languages which are
foreigners--there is left a personal and delicate preference for
certain forms of landscape, of monuments, of talent. And even this
radiance has its limits. The cult of the masterpieces of art and
thought is the only impulse of the soul which, by general consent, has
always soared above patriotic littlenesses.

"But," the official voices trumpet, "there is another magic
formula--the great common Past of every nation."

Yes, there is the Past. That long Golgoth