be, in practice, mere symbols for their uses. Piety is more closely
linked with custom than with thought. It exercises an irrational
suasion, moralises by contagion, and brings an emotional peace.

[Sidenote: Embodiment essential to spirit.]

Patriotism is another form of piety in which its natural basis and
rational function may be clearly seen. It is right to prefer our own
essential to country to all others, because we are children and citizens
before we can be travellers or philosophers. Specific character is a
necessary point of origin for universal relations: a pure nothing can
have no radiation or scope. It is no accident for the soul to be
embodied; her very essence is to express and bring to fruition the
body's functions and resources. Its instincts make her ideals and its
relations her world. A native country is a sort of second body, another
enveloping organism to give the will definition. A specific inheritance
strengthens the soul. Cosmopolitanism has doubtless its place, because a
man may well cultivate in himself, and represent in his nation,
affinities to other peoples, and such assimilation to them as is
compatible with personal integrity and clearness of purpose. Plasticity
to things foreign need not be inconsistent with happiness and utility at
home. But happiness and utility are possible nowhere to a man who
represents nothing and who looks out on the world without a plot of his
own to stand on, either on earth or in heaven. He wanders from place to
place, a voluntary exile, always querulous, always uneasy, always alone.
His very criticisms express no ideal. His experience is without
sweetness, without cumulative fruits, and his children, if he has them,
are without morality. For reason and happiness are like other
flowers--they wither when plucked.

[Sidenote: Piety to the gods takes form from current ideals.]

The object most commonly associated with piety is the gods. Popular
philosophy, inverting the natural order of ideas, thinks piety to the
gods the source of morality. But piety, when genuine, is rather an
incidental expression of morality. Its sources are perfectly natural. A
volitional life that reaches the level of reflection is necessarily
moral in proportion to the concreteness and harmony of its instincts.
The fruits which such harmonious instincts, expressed in consciousness,
may eventually bear, fruits which would be the aim of virtue, are not
readily imaginable, and the descriptio