The contents of an Englishman's national idea tends to be more exclusive.

His patriotism is anchored to the historical achievements of Great Britain and restricted thereby.

As a good patriot he is bound to be more preoccupied with the inherited fabric of national institutions and traditions than he is with the ideal and more than national possibilities of the future.

This very loyalty to the national fabric does, indeed, imply an important ideal content; but the national idealism of an Englishman, a German, or even a Frenchman, is heavily mortgaged to his own national history and cannot honestly escape the debt.

The good patriot is obliged to offer faithful allegiance to a network of somewhat arbitrary institutions, social forms, and intellectual habits--on the ground that his country is exposed to more serious dangers from premature emancipation than it is from stubborn conservatism.