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Nowadays many refer to national feelings as a basie element not only of national but also of social identification. They are using it in an irrational and undefined form so that it might be used to defend the most disparate positions from extreme left to extreme right. In reality, it is most often used to hide and mystify the real positions and ideas which need the support of national feelings. However, from the view point of psychology and sociology the national feeling is no mystery. Many studies of a theoretical and experimental character have been dedicated to nationalism, so that nowadays we can very precisely State when it carries progressive tendencies and when it car-ries reactionary tendencies and positions. Namely, as all the other grouD identifications nationalism can rest upon two modes of identification between which the individual can oscillate, which lends to nationalism a markedly multiple and ambivalent meaning. In other words, it rests upon the mechanism »inter-group« solidarity and »ex-tra-group« antagonism. The individual identifies with his group, feels that he belongs to it, feels that he is included in the group in inter-group relations regardless of whether this group is a family, tribe, nation or race. He notices and stresses the differences between him-self and those outside his group. Some authors whose viewpoint is societal Darwinism, such as Felix Le Dantec, think that every social unit from family to nation can exist only if the unit has a common enemy, that means that antagonism toward someone outside one’s group is a pre-condition for intra-group identification. So that the group might feel solidarity it must be conscious of its enemies. Ma-chiavelli already knew the trick that by creating a »common enemy« it is possible to achieve group or national solidarity and bv this means dispose of inner conflict and class struggle in society. This political trick has been used many times in history from antiąuity to Hitler’s time (who created the common enemy of the German nation in Jews and communists). Here the ąuestion arises whether intra-group identification can exist at all without an outside enemy, whether national feeling can be realized without animosity towards another nation. Research shows that there exists intra-group identification that does not necessarily create antagonism towards outer group elements. This is especially the case when intra-group identification extends to in-clude all of mankind. The Romantic movement, which brought to life national feelings, also tried to develop this intra-group feeling for all of mankind (Hólderlin: »My love is all mankind«). When »in the national feeling« as a pre-condition of national identification hatred reigns against other nations or other social groups then we speak of ethno-centrism, about the continuous tendency to stress the advantages

of one s own nation and blacken and destroy the values of another nation.

This kind of ethno-centrism is the essence of nationalism and therefore nationalism can never be progressive as is maintained by certain ignorant individuals. Ethno-centrism is the cause of national and group prejudices, systematic mis-representation of another nation, blind partiality, a continuous unfriendly disposition that easily takes on a form of verbal or even physical violence. Ethno-centrism has its

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