346
PARTISAN REVIEW
the ways in which human beings deal with one another, that determine
everthing else and constitute the national organism-the nation–
whether it takes the form of a state or not. Whence it follows that the
essential human unit in which man's nature is fully realised is not the
individual, or a voluntary association which can be dissolved or altered
or abandoned at will, but the nation; that it is to the creation and
maintenance of the nation that the lives of subordinate units, the
family, the tribe, the clan, the province, must, if they are to be fully
themselves, be directed; for their nature and purpose, what is often
called their meaning, is derived from its nature and its purposes; and
that these are revealed not by rational analysis, but by a special
awareness, which need not be fully conscious, of the unique relation–
ship that binds indiv.idual human beings into the indissoluble and
unanalysable organic whole, which Burke identified with society,
Rousseau with the people, Hegel with the state, but which for nation–
alists is, and can only be, the nation, whether its social structure or
form of government.
Thirdly, this outlook entails the notion that one of the most
compelling, perhaps the most compelling, reason for holding a
particular belief, pursuing a particular policy, serving a particular end,
living a particular life, is that these ends, beliefs, policies, lives, are
ours.
This is tantamount to saying that these rules or doctrines or
principles should be followed not because they lead
to
virtue or
happiness or justice or liberty, or are ordained by God or Church or
prince or parliament or some other universally acknowledged author–
ity, or are good or right in themselves, and therefore valid in their own
right, universally, for all men in a given situation; rather they are to be
followed because these values are those of
my
group-for the national–
ist, of
my
nation; these thoughts, feelings, this course of action, are
good or right, and I shall achieve fulfilment or happiness by identify–
ing myself with them, because they are demands of the particular form
of social life into which I have been born, to which I am connected by
Burke's myriad strands, which reach into the past and future, of my
nation, and apart from which I am,
to
change the metaphor, a leaf, a
twig, broken off from the tree, which alone can give it life; so that if I
am separated from it by circumstance or my own wilfulness, I shall
become aimless, I shall wither away, being left, at best, with nostalgic
memories of what it once was to have been truly alive and active and
performing that function in the pattern of the national life understand–
ing of which alone gave meaning and value to all I was and did.
Florid and emotive prose of this kind was used by Herder, Burke,
