That may be unfair to him. The point
is that the accepted patriotic code assumes one kind of human nature,
the commercial code another. And the codes are probably founded on
true expectations to this extent, that when a man adopts a certain
code he tends to exhibit the kind of human nature which the code
demands.
That is one reason why it is so dangerous to generalize about human
nature. A loving father can be a sour boss, an earnest municipal
reformer, and a rapacious jingo abroad. His family life, his business
career, his politics, and his foreign policy rest on totally different
versions of what others are like and of how he should act. These
versions differ by codes in the same person, the codes differ somewhat
among persons in the same social set, differ widely as between social
sets, and between two nations, or two colors, may differ to the point
where there is no common assumption whatever. That is why people
professing the same stock of religious beliefs can go to war. The
element of their belief which determines conduct is that view of the
facts which they assume.
That is where codes enter so subtly and so pervasively into the making
of public opinion. The orthodox theory holds that a public opinion
constitutes a moral judgment on a group of facts. The theory I am
suggesting is that, in the present state of education, a public
opinion is primarily a moralized and codified version of the facts.
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