DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CZECH NATIONALISM
as a deeply moral personality. As an historian and politician who worked with historical as well as contemporary facts and looked realistically at their nature, he was aware of conflicts inside human society. Palacký saw the struggle between good and evil, justice and injustice, reason and brutal instinct, the just and humane order and individual or collective despotism. At the highest level of his national, social, and political reasoning, Palacký stands as an ethical and religious man hoping for the final victory of righteousness, truth, and justice. Palacký’s national thinking and his political program are a personal, structured whole, reflecting previous Czech spiritual development, the contemporary political situation, and careful regard for the trends of world activity. Greatness of construction, logical integrity, and a deep moral core are the indisputable attributes of Palacký’s concept. In the nineteenth century, it became the cornerstone of Czech political and national thinking, Palacký’s principles, which were accepted at times but also criticized or refused, became in a later period the source of Czech national ideology.
The case of Palacký the Czech historian and politician bears witness to the continuing positive and negative effects of national ideology in its various forms in history. Patriotism, nationalism, and integral nationalism are still strong determinants of world affairs, although the principles of social class and the class struggle have also shown their integrating and disintegrating strength. Modern nationalism is at present being intensively studied by various social sciences, though it is still necessary to use historical methods and to view the problem from an evolutionary perspective. The aim of such an analysis should be to recognize the social function and all of the positive and negative aspects of the national phenomenon. In the common interest of nations and states there must evolve a positive and constructive ideal of national consciousness which will accept the principles of mutual respect, tolerance, and full deference to national individuality as the fundamental ethical rule in relations among nations.
