I desire as much as any one to preserve our national identity, and to
make it worthy of preservation, and this can only be done by the
domination of some inspiring ideal which will draw all hearts to it;
which may at first have that element of strangeness in it which Ben
Jonson said was in all excellent beauty, and which will later become--as
all high things we love do finally become--familiar to us, and nearer
and closer to us than the beatings of our own hearts.
When ideals which really lie at the root of our being are first
proclaimed, all that is external in life protests. So were many great
reformers martyred, but they left their ideals behind them in the air,
and men breathed them and they became part of their very being.
Nationality is a state of consciousness, a mood of definite character in
our intellectual being, and it is not perceived first except in profound
meditation; it does not become apparent from superficial activities any
more than we could, by looking at the world and the tragic history of
mankind, discover that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us.
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