NAZIONE. — In the field of sociology and public law, there is no concept more confused than that of the nation, nor any word more difficult to define.
The difficulty arises both from the various meanings attributed to the term and from the multiplicity of elements characterizing the human group designated by II.
From its origins in the Latin language, the word natio has been used to signify several realities. Although, according to its etymology (natio from nascor), it properly means the act of being born, it came to signify the effect, origin, stock, race, and species, with reference even to irrational and inanimate beings. By an easy transition, from lineage it was applied to the people born in the territory where they live and, further, by metonymy, to the territory itself, as in the expressions natione Dacus, natione Arretio, and finally to a defined class of persons sharing some common connection: natio optimatum, natio candidatorum.
In modern usage it may indifferently signify the State, the people, the fatherland, and, in a narrower and more proper sense, an ethnic group characterized by particular distinctive features. In international law it is equivalent to the State, as in the expression League of Nations; in common usage, to the State or the people, as in the expression Italian nation.
The second source of difficulty derives from the multiplicity of the elements, called the factors of nationality, that characterize the national group, among which it is difficult to establish which expresses its essence. Unity of origin and traditions, of culture and language, of religion and territory are the most common features with which the nation presents itself to the observer, and from which, according to personal preferences, an extreme variety of definitions may follow. Mancini, in fact, gave predominance over the others to consciousness of nationality, followed in this by Palma and Jellinek; Le Fur and Leclercq gave it to the will to live in common; Bluntschli to language; Fichte to race; Delos to a common civilization and culture, while nationalist movements identified the nation with the State.
The most recent inquiry is more or less agreed in admitting three points: none of the factors of nationality can be considered an essential element of the nation; the nation is clearly distinct from the State; its essence must be sought in something spiritual and interior to man.
The nation, first of all, does not consist in race, a predominantly materialistic concept that refers chiefly to somatic characteristics and cannot be applied integrally to man, in whom spiritual qualities, his specific distinguishing feature, predominate over physical characteristics. The narrowness of the concept of race therefore cannot exhaust that of the nation. Even if race is assigned a nobler meaning, as is done by the anthropo-sociological school, one would still encounter the difficulty of determining its content. By the admission of all serious students of anthropology and ethnology, no other concept is so obscure and vague. The more fundamental opposition between race and nation, however, consists in the fact that the latter is distinguished by its spiritual characteristics, whereas the former remains on the material plane.
Language is undoubtedly one of the most visible indicators of nationality, and yet it cannot be regarded as a constitutive element. There are, in fact, peoples who speak the same language and are divided into several nations, often in open antagonism. The phenomenon is particularly evident in the Republics of Latin America. Neither religion nor territory should be overvalued, any more than language. Unity of faith is not necessarily required for the existence of a nation, within which groups of different religious professions may well coexist while nevertheless feeling united by their common belonging to the same ethnic group. Territory, moreover, although it exerts a certain influence on the formation of some national characteristics (e.g., in the Greek people and its culture), is an extrinsic element. The Jewish people was a nation without a territory for many centuries.
The exclusion of the individual factors of nationality from the category of essential elements does not, however, justify Jellinek’s subjectivist conclusion, according to which the nation would be merely a subjective phenomenon, since the various factors are objective qualities that impress particular and unmistakable features upon man and prepare the ground from which that spiritual unity will spring, the concrete manifestation of the existence of a national group.
Continuing with the negative aspect, it should also be added that the nation is not identified with the State, not only because history presents the existence of multinational States, Switzerland being the classic example, but also because the two social formations differ substantially. The nation brings into unity individuals characterized by clearly distinct physical and, above all, spiritual features; the State, on the other hand, brings together heterogeneous social groups. Without a profound homogeneity of culture and affinity of disposition, the nation does not and cannot exist, whereas the State exists and remains viable even without them. This difference is intrinsic and essential, since the objective or factual unity from which the being of the nation arises consists in the sum of certain partial similarities that distinguish a given human group from every other. Until the formative causes shaping man have moulded a clearly defined type common to the entire aggregate, the nation does not arise, because the specific stimulus is lacking that must cause the generic instinct of solidarity to express itself in this form rather than another.
The opposite must be said of the State, whose formation requires only the generic similarities of human nature, of its most common needs and its most universal perfections, equal in all members of the species. Hence the broad scope of its natural end, which extends to all the goods necessary for a sufficiently human and advanced life, whereas that of the nation is restricted to the preservation of its cultural patrimony.
In these final determinations, a particular concept of the nation has already begun to emerge; for its complete formulation, it is necessary to proceed to an examination of the empirical datum.
It seems evident, first of all, that the nation belongs to the category of natural social aggregates, since it is constituted by a nucleus of intelligent beings joined by an internal principle, the effect of innate human sociability, which spontaneously tends to cement together those subjects who are close to one another and united by particular similarities of origin, disposition, and culture. The contrary opinion, which attributes the origin of the nation to the State, is shown to be unfounded by the fact that, even before the modern national States were formed, there already existed, in the territories subject to their political rule, social cells clearly identified as ethnic groups, to which the quality of nations cannot be denied. It is not the nation that presupposes the State, but the State that presupposes the nation as the environment in which the phenomenon of the State comes about.
As a natural social aggregate, the nation appears to be composed of a sum of individuals who resemble one another not only in nature but also in certain well-defined accidental specifications. Now, since man is a rational being, he does not become connected in a de facto association except through a spiritual bond; consequently, one of the essential elements of the nation must be sought in something consciously apprehended. This element consists in consciousness of nationality, that is, of all those common features characterizing individuals, or partial units which, as properties of the aggregate, constitute its social patrimony and produce in the subjects the will to live together and the feeling of being bound to a common destiny.
This first element of a spiritual order is specified still more precisely by the end toward which associated action naturally tends, since the n., like every other social formation, is also specified by its end. This, in turn, properly consists, as Delos has shown so well, in the preservation and development of the common cultural heritage for the benefit of the fullest and most perfect formation of the human person. For what produces the unitary consciousness and the will to collaborate of the members of an n. are the organic and spiritual partial units that form a bond in fact even before the emergence of national consciousness. The objective foundation on which the feeling of social unity in the n. rests is therefore the various similarities customarily called factors of nationality. It follows that, if the unity of religion, language, traditions, and culture were weakened beyond a certain limit, the instinct of sociability would lose its stimulus and the national aggregate its cohesion. If it wishes to continue to exist, it must preserve and develop, protect and safeguard its cultural heritage; this means that its natural purpose consists precisely in this preservation and defense, which cannot be separated from reasonable progress.
But national culture, its preservation and development, would have no importance whatsoever as a collective end if they did not redound to the benefit of the human person. The bearers and creators of civilization are persons, not the n. conceived or idealized as a subject existing in itself; the common culture must therefore flow back to its creators as a heritage to which all, without distinction, have a right. The natural importance of the n. is proportional to the service it renders to man, and this service is most distinctive and proper. It impresses upon his faculties operational habits and permanent dispositions, which will give direction and facility to their operations, actualizing the potentiality with which the human being enters life. It thus performs a function within man and forms his soul and character, shapes his sentiments, imprinting upon the entire complex pattern of his psychic functions particular attitudes that will become permanent.
Through a slow and continuous action, the n. imperceptibly grafts the elements of its culture into man; it communicates to him the heritage of its spirit, its ideas, its traditions, its language, and its religion, sealing his soul forever, just as the community of origin from the same stock has sealed his body.
By gathering into a synthesis the elements described thus far, one can arrive at a complete definition of the n. In its essence, it is a natural social aggregate which, in the consciousness of its unity of origin and culture, tends toward the preservation and development of its own peculiarities and distinctive features, with a view to the fullest formation of the human person.