Cosmopolitanism Is Far Holier Than Patriotism

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Samuel Taylor Coleridge · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 27 pages

Twenty-seven pages with a full abstract and train of thoughts. *It is the most genuinely two-sided file in this batch*, and that is worth knowing before opening it: although the title states a conclusion, a long stretch of the document is given over to the best case for the opposite view, in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's own words.

Coleridge's argument comes first and it is put at its strongest. Morality is no accident of human nature but its essential characteristic; the principle which is the abiding spirit of the law remains perpetual and unaltered, though the letter of the law and the mode of realising it in practice must be modified by circumstance. The Law of Nations, he observes, appeals only to the conscience and prudence of the parties concerned — so wherein does it differ from the moral laws that reason, considered as conscience, dictates to individuals? Patriotism is then defended as a link in the golden chain of our affections and virtues, turning with indignant scorn from the false philosophy or mistaken religion which would persuade a man that cosmopolitanism is nobler than nationality and the human race a sublimer object of love than a people. His images are the memorable part. Patriotism is the kinship of the most unselfish of human affections, the powers and interests of men spread without confusion through a common sphere like the vibrations propagated in the air by a single voice, distinct yet coherent, all uniting to express one thought and the same feeling; and is the morning star less brilliant, he asks, because the moons of Saturn too feed their lamps from the same sun? The historical case follows: Greece while free resembled a collection of mirrors set in a single frame, each with its own focus of patriotism yet all capable of converging on one point and consuming a common foe — the fountain of light and civilisation to all mankind — and when the Greeks lost their independence they lost their patriotism with it and became the cosmopolites of antiquity. Blavatsky's reply, which gives the file its title, distinguishes patriotism proper from what she calls grasping greediness cloaked in patriotism, and it is the contrast between the two positions that makes the file worth reading whole rather than in extract.

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