Objective standards based on permanent values take a long-term
view. Without them man cannot look very far beyond his immediate
selfish interests which may not, in the long run, be to his own best
advantage. His legislative efforts, all by himself, ultimately may not
only prove detrimental to himself but may also alienate him from
his surrounding groups.
Social groupings have inevitably led to the division of mankind.
Each group promotes friendship between its members and incites
them to take hostile attitude towards other groups to maintain its
own interests. Feuds between tribes used to be bitter and recurrent.
Tribes were later supplanted by national states. Hostility to the
out-group is as characteristic of nations as it was of tribes. Every
nation has feeling of ill-will and hatred towards its neighbour. The
slightest provocation sends them flying at each other's throats. Prof.
Cobban's remarks on this point should be noted:
Nationalism is a feeling which is born out of hatred and lives on
enmity. Nations become aware of themselves by their conflicts with
other nations and their feelings of hostility do not cease with the
completion of national unity. No sooner has a nation asserted its own
right to self-determination than it sets about oppressing other nations
that make the same claim. For all these reasons it may be concluded
that nationalism is a very dangerous foundation for a state.(6)
Frederick Hertz, the historian of nationalism, writes as follows in
his book Nationality in History and Politics:
History shows that for the greater part the quarrels between several
nations had scarcely any other occasion than that these nations were
different combinations of people and called by different names. To an
Englishman, the name of a Frenchman, Spaniard, or an Italian raises,
of course, ideas of hatred and contempt. Yet the simple name of man,
applied properly, never fails to work a salutary effect (p. 328).
In his book, New Hopes for a Changing World, Bertrand Russell has
expressed the view that in the present age, the thing which stands in
the way of social contacts extending beyond the limits of the nation
and which, therefore, poses the most serious threat to the human
race, is the cult of nationalism. We note with surprise that while
Russell condemns nationalism in general, he speaks highly of the
nationalism of his own people.
There is, however, a fundamental difference between the tribes
of the past and the nations of the present day. Nationalism does not
Political System 218