Ethics and some modern world problems / by Willam McDougall.

  • McDougall, William, 1871-1938.
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Ethics and some modern world problems / by Willam McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The foregoing paragraphs are a highly con¬ densed statement of the argument for Nationalism, and for the sentiment of patriotism or national loyalty, as essential conditions of the good life for the masses of mankind. It is fashionable, among those intellectuals who claim for them¬ selves a monopoly of enlightened liberalism and humane sentiment, to decry patriotism as a barbarous survival which, whatever excuse or justification it may have had in the past, can now and in the future work only harm to man¬ kind. This belittling of patriotism is one of the stock features of the repertoire of the Cosmo¬ politan in his attacks upon Nationalism. But the more the influence of religion wanes, the more urgently and obviously do we need the in¬ fluences of enlightened patriotism and of group loyalties of every sort. If one had to attempt to compare religion with patriotism as influences making for moral¬ ity throughout the history of mankind, I, for one, should not hesitate to give patriotism the higher place. Fortunately, throughout the develop¬ ment of European civilization, with its dual sys¬ tem of ethics, the dominance of sentiment over logic, so natural to the mass of mankind, has per-