Just so with the tribe. It exists as a tribe only because, and in so far as, it is conscious of itself, and in so far as the idea of the tribe and devotion to its service determines the actions of individuals. The mere fact of the possession of a tribal name suffices to prove the existence of this self-consciousness. And, as a matter of fact, tribal self-consciousness is in many cases extremely strongly developed; the idea of the tribe, of its rights and powers, of its past and its future plays a great part among warlike savages; and an injury done to the tribe, or an insult offered to it, will often be kept in mind for many years, even for generations, and will be avenged when an opportunity occurs, even in spite of the certainty of death to many individuals and the risk of extermination of the whole tribe.
The federation of Iroquois tribes to form a rudimentary nation seems to have been due to a self-conscious collective purpose. And, when other tribes become fused to form nations, the same holds true. Consider the Hebrew nation, one of the earliest historical examples of a number of allied tribes becoming fused to a nation. Surely the idea of the nation as the chosen people of Jehovah played a vital part in its consolidation, implanted and fostered as it was by a succession of great teachers, the prophets. Their work was to implant this idea and this sentiment strongly in the minds of the people, to create and foster this traditional sentiment by the aid of supernatural sanctions. The national self-consciousness thus formed has continued to be not only one factor, but almost the only factor or condition, of the continued existence of the Jewish people as a people, or at any rate the one fundamental condition on which all the others are founded--their exclusive religion, their objection to intermarriage with outsiders, their hope of a future restoration of the fortunes of the nation, and so forth.
And the same is true of every real nation; its existence and its power are grounded in its consciousness of itself, the idea of the nation as a dominant factor in the minds of the individuals. The dominant sentiment which centres about that idea is very different in the various nations. It may be chiefly pride in the nation's past history, as in Spain; or hope for its future, as in Japan; or the need of self-assertion in the present, as in pre-war Germany.