I just stumbled across the following passage in an
address that William James gave in 1897 on the occasion of the unveiling of the
Robert Gould Shaw monument in Boston. In the light of recent developments in
the United States, I thought I should share it as a particularly apt comment on
what we are witnessing today and what, somehow, inexplicably, we have allowed
to let happen.
“The deadliest enemies of nations are not their
foreign foes, they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal
enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above
all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day
by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting
reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by
the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders
to rabid partisans or empty quacks.”
(William
James, Memories and Studies, London/
Bombay/ Calcutta: Longmans, Green and Co. 1911, 58)
