When God is thus enthusiastically ejected from the rostrum of the most famous church in the country, to make way for the patriotic emotion, I think we are justified in the fear that patriotism may become our religion. Patriotism indulges that craving for a sense of union with a solitary herd, which is an inheritance of all gregarious animals. It is a craving which our modern sophisticated, citified, and diverse civilization leaves unfed in normal times. There is a great swing towards war on this account even among the most pacific people. They are flocking for a drink of this emotion.
Men are willing to be dead, if they can only be dead in a pile.
When a desire springs so deeply from our ancient inheritance as this gregarious hunger does, we always feel it as mystic and inscrutable, we attribute a divine beneficence to the satisfaction of it. As a matter of fact, it would be better for the progress of society, in science and art and morality and happiness, if this terrible solidarity could be mitigated instead of enlarged. For it inhibits individual experiment, and it falsifies the facts of life, always pretending the nation is more socially and brotherly organized than it is. It is the temporary indulgence of a facile emotion. The spirit of this people is already united and when effort and suffering and sacrifice have completed this union, men will no longer speak of any lines either of race or association cutting athwart the great body of this nation.