When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.

Stevenson contrasts a merely scenic or geographic patriotism with a civic and moral one. Loving one’s country is not only affection for its landscapes—hills, prairies, plains, mountains, sea—but devotion to an “inner air” and “inner light”: the intangible national ideals that make freedom real in daily life. The image of “breath of self-respect” suggests that liberty is not abstract; it is the condition that allows individuals to live with dignity, agency, and conscience. The passage frames American identity as rooted in democratic values and personal autonomy, implying that true patriotism is measured by commitment to those principles as much as by attachment to place.