better organs of society and demand further embodiment. To
love one's country, unless that love is quite blind and lazy, must
involve a distinction between the country's actual condition and its
inherent ideal; and this distinction in turn involves a demand for
changes and for effort. Party allegiance is a true form of patriotism.
For a party, at least in its intent, is an association of persons
advocating the same policy. Every thoughtful man must advocate some
policy, and unless he has the misfortune to stand quite alone in his
conception of public welfare he will seek to carry out that policy by
the aid of such other persons as advocate it also.

[Sidenote: The earth and the race the first objects of rational
loyalty.]

The springs of culture, which retrospective patriotism regards, go back
in the last instance to cosmic forces. The necessity that marshals the
stars makes possible the world men live in, and is the first general and
law-giver to every nation. The earth's geography, its inexorable
climates with their flora and fauna, make a play-ground for the human
will which should be well surveyed by any statesman who wishes to judge
and act, not fantastically, but with reference to the real situation.
Geography is a most enlightening science. In describing the habitat of
man it largely explains his history. Animal battles give the right and
only key to human conflicts, for the superadded rational element in man
is not partisan, but on the contrary insinuates into his economy the
novel principle of justice and peace. As this leaven, however, can
mingle only with elements predisposed to receive it, the basis of reason
itself, in so far as it attains expression, must be sought in the
natural world. The fortunes of the human family among the animals thus
come to concern reason and to be the background of progress.

Within humanity the next sphere of interest for a patriot is the race
from which he is descended, with its traditional languages and
religions. Blood is the ground of character and intelligence. The fruits
of civilisation may, indeed, be transmitted from one race to another and
consequently a certain artificial homogeneity may be secured amongst
different nations; yet unless continual intermarriage takes place each
race will soon recast and vitiate the common inheritance. The fall of
the Roman Empire offered such a spectacle, when various types of
barbarism, with a more or less classic veneer, re-establis