On National Greatness
November 26, 2015
Still-Life, Gillis Gillisz de Bergh; 1637-39
HAPPY THANKSGIVING to American readers of this site. May you have a happy and peaceful day with your families. Since this is a day of national gratitude, you may enjoy this essay, “National Greatness” by Orestes Brownson, who wrote in 1846:
That this is a great country, if we speak of the territory, is very true, though not much greater than China, and far less than Russia, and withal a great part of it as yet uncultivated, and no little of it even untrodden by civilized man. But whether we are a great people or not, or whether we have any special ground of self-adulation, is another and a different question; and a question which will be variously answered, according to the views which are taken of what constitutes true national greatness. Our judgments of the comparative greatness of different nations depend entirely on the standard of greatness we adopt, and by which we judge them. We call a people great or small in proportion as they do or do not conform to our standard of greatness. Vary the standard, and we vary our judgment. The people we called great, when indeed by one standard, we may call not great, if judged by a different standard. All, therefore, depends on the standard we adopt. Consequently, in order to determine whether we are really a great people or not, we must first determine what is the true standard of national greatness.
What, then, is true national greatness? We answer, that nation is greatest in which man may most easily and effectually fulfil the true and proper end of man. The nation, under the point of view we here consider the subject, is in the people. Its greatness must, then, be in the greatness of the people. The people are a collection or aggregation of individuals, and their greatness taken collectively is simply their greatness taken individually. Consequently the greatness of a nation is the greatness of the individuals that compose it. The question of national greatness resolves itself, therefore, into the question of individual greatness. The greatness of the individual consists in his fulfilling the great ends of his existence, the ends for which Almighty God made him and placed him here. No man is truly great who neglects life’s great ends, nor can one be said in truth to approach greatness any further than he fulfils them.
