21
and it was codified as the Rights of Man. The recognition accorded to the value of the human personality is what establishes the civic value and the right to exist of organised social bodies—states, churches, nations, classes and parties and their subordinate constituent parts. This is not contradicted by the fact that social bodies are given also utilitarian values—the faculty and power to realise certain useful aims for individuals and the collective bodies.
As soon as one admits the rights of the human person, the individual, one admits also his right to his own language (mother tongue); that is a matter of course in uninational states, but in multinational states the official recognition of languages is a matter of national contest and the right to language must be recognised and codified.
With the strengthening of democracy national tongues receive recognition in the administration of the states, and where in accordance with mediæval tradition Latin or the language of the ruling classes of a nation were used, the state gradually comes to employ in its administration languages formerly not used but suppressed. This is true of nationally mixed states, Austria, Russia, etc.[1]
The mother tongue, as a means of intercourse, is intimately associated with the thoughts, feelings and the entire spiritual and cultural life of individuals and nations. To the extent in which all nations in Europe participated in promoting culture, the various languages became richer and more valuable from the cultural point of view, and the result is the growing, cultural equality of languages in analogy to political and international equality in the rights of nations. Modern means of communication made possible the achievement of a cultural unity among the dismembered parts of nations ruled by various states—nationality became a conscious force, language its practical exponent, and social literature in its widest meaning became the expression and the most valuable organ of nationality.
That is why the political dependence of nations and parts of nations in mixed states is so keenly felt and so strongly and so generally resented. What extremely barbarian act it was to cut the Polish nation into three parts and to forbid even children to speak Polish, as was done in Prussia and Russia! By what right are the Poles, Czechs and Slovaks, etc., oppressed politically, when other and smaller nations (Danes, Dutch, and other) are free? And is it not quite absurd to have the Roumanian in Roumania free, while his neighbor and brother in Hungary is oppressed? Why should the Albanians have their own state, and the Jugoslavs not?
This disparity in the official valuation of nationality and state is based on the mediæval valuation of states, consecrated by the church; this valuation was taken over by modern absolutism. This absolutism was sustained by dynasties and aristocracies; but when in the 18th century the Great Revolution (a revolution that was not political only, but also moral and intellectual) organised democracy and republicanism, when absolutism, monarchism and aristocratism were weakened, then nationality and the language of the people came also to be recognised in the administration of the state. The theocratic over-valuation of the state, and that meant practically of the sovereign, apotheosis of these gave way to a democratic valuation; the state becomes the central organ of administration, not of aristocratic domination, and therefore becomes also the instrument of the nations and of their cultural endeavours. To-day all European nations struggle for liberation and political unity, for the political organisation of Europe on the basis of nationality. The intrinsic historical connection of democracy with nationality explains why the democratic states, France, England, Italy, &c., and now revolutionary Russia, declare solemnly in favour of the right of all nations to self-determination.
- ↑ That explains why democratic movements, especially revolutions, promoted the language of the masses; during the French Revolution, for instance, important state acts were published in Provençal; and it is known how deeply the French Revolution affected style and rhetoric. The literary use of various dialects also can be explained by popular political movements, etc. The Russian revolution is very interesting in its influence on the various smaller nations in Russia.
