The Israelites did not have a monopoly of the "God's Chosen Race" belief. Milton, in his "Aeropagitica," proclaimed that "God reveals Himself first to His Englishmen." Hegel, however, asserted that it was the divine decree for the Germans to lead the world. And, until Hitler's hordes smashed through their land, not a few of the mystically inclined Poles passionately believed that theirs was to be "the Messianic race." In the Far East, the Japanese cherished similar beliefs until American bombs initiated a process of revisionary thinking.
Naïve sentimentalists or distorted thinkers manufacture romantic impressions about their race religion history or country. Some dream golden-age, Eden-idyllic fantasies about the past or future that have no basis in fact. Perverted wishful thinking asks for illusion--and gets it!
False theory breaks down before personal experience of the present fact as it actually is. This is often quite painful but how else is the real truth to be established when the sayer of it is disregarded or disbelieved?
-- Notebooks Category 17: The Religious Urge > Chapter 4 : Problems of Organized Religion > # 136
