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category; and the implicit excuse cannot be considered more applicable in public than in private life.

When I say that a man can only sacrifice what is his own, not what belongs to others, but has as little right to do wrong on others' behalf as upon his own, the line of demarcation thus drawn is anything but clear. To the difficulty of drawing it in practice may be ascribed the previously mentioned doubts and collisions of duties, which arise for the man who has to act on behalf of others, e.g. for the manager of a limited-liability company. The same applies to the organ or servant of the State. And another point comes in here. As the manager will, as a rule, influence the direction of the company, with the consequence that he is by no means free from responsibility for its direction, so, to a still larger extent, will be the case with the servants or organs of the State (princes, government, parliament, etc.), since these actually shape the will of the State, and act at their own discretion on the State's behalf. Therefore the investigation of the moral responsibility of individuals acting for the State blends with an investigation of the State's own relation to the claims of morality.

Can it in reality be said that any such relationship exists? In other words, can the State be considered as actually willing and acting in a responsible way? From the more modern point of view, according to which the moral claims on the State and the individual are identical, the inclination would doubtless be to deny this. One will assert, from that point of view, that to speak of the State as willing anything and as acting is a mere façon de parler. Only living creatures, it will be said, are able to act; and only human beings act under moral responsibility. The State is only an institution, a tool which men create under given circumstances to promote their aims. To say that the State 'acts' only means that its leaders act in order to promote their own or their fellows' interests. It is these leaders, organs, and servants who bear the moral responsibility for the State-will which they obey and the State-actions which they themselves create and carry out. And, as these persons, in the performance of their public duties, are subject to the same moral standards as they obey in private life, the identity of the State's and the individual's relation to the moral law is thereby conceded.

Yet such a denial of the State as an independent willing and acting subject does not hold on closer investigation. Of course there are many kinds of 'States,' and there are many steps in the ladder between the more arbitrary, mechanical forms of State and those which have grown naturally by a predominantly historical process. I shall, however, confine my attention to the highest of all civil or political forms of State-the national State, i.e. the ethnological, historic, linguistic unit consisting of the people or nation organised as a State. There cannot, in my opinion, be any doubt that the State so conceived is something more than an artificially formed institution, which men could, of their free will, just as well have omitted to form for themselves. This is not the place to discuss the difficult and disputed questions as to the right with which, or the sense in which, one may designate the State-society an 'organism,' a 'super-organism,' or the like. It is sufficient in the present context to note that we clearly have here to do with a power-centre, whence not merely conscious but unconscious powers emanate. I regard it therefore as equally indubitable that the nation organised as a State can rightly regard itself as a willing and acting unit, as a link in historic evolution and in the society of mankind, with its own special tasks, rights and duties. And its task, together with the right and the duty therein involved, will first and foremost be self-assertion, in the sense of the right and duty both to live its own independent life and to develop itself in every way which does not invade the interests of others.

In the national State, conceived as a unit and a historic growth, the centre of gravity lies in the nation organised as a State. Juridically, of course, every State, quâ legal entity, both wills and acts. But that view which sees in the State a unit historically and morally bearing the responsibility for its will and its actions is materially weakened if it be applied to any sort of conglomerate people or fraction of a people organised as a State. Certain political writers of our day would put the concept of nationality completely out of court, and proclaim the State as a concept elevated high above the nation, having the right to draw around itself all the feelings of piety associated with the fatherland, and the ability to appropriate the historical tasks associated with the race and

the nation. A protest must be entered against this. Theories of the kind merely form a transparent veil for State-egotism, which, detached from a national basis, lays the yoke of its might on foreign nationalities and seeks power for its own sake. It is the nation, the individuality of the people, which has the right of existence; detached from it, the State becomes only an artificial creation fitted to serve certain human aims, but also fitted to be changed or dissolved according as those aims alter. If we agree in regarding the State-society in this sense, as an historic formation with its independent life and its own will and power of action, independent of that inherent in individual members of the society, then it follows that that argument fails, according to which the question whether the actions of the State are subject to the moral commandments can no longer be said to resolve itself into a question about the subjection of the acting statesman and civil servant to these commandments. We stand, rather, face to face with a new morally responsible subject-the State itself as different from the individual; and thus it is not a priori impossible that a different morality may hold good for the will and action of the State, or at any rate that the moral commandments may have a modified application according to the condition of the State in question and the circumstances of the particular case.

It is just this, as we have seen, that is asserted by a number of well-known sociological and political writers, whose opinion is crystallised by one of them in the saying that brotherly kindness has nothing to do with the policy of States. This assertion may be met with the observation that the burden of proof rests with those who make it. For it holds true for the moral world-order, as it holds true for the higher religions, that, when once that order is recognised, it must be regarded as universal, embracing the whole life of mankind, human affairs in general. The great fundamental law of charity is this: do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Now, if such a moral law is recognised at all, it becomes necessary, if its universal applicability be denied, to prove that unusual conditions are present which exclude it. But I have never seen any attempt to establish any

such proof. And it is difficult to see why some of the most important aspects of human intercourse, namely international relations, should lie outside the ordinary moral world-order, and be exempt from the fundamental principles of morality.

The application of these principles may indeed be different for the State and the individual, because in the case of the State there may be a collision of duties, which does not occur in that of the individual, at any rate when he acts in his own concerns. Such collisions of duties do not, however, occur, as I have said, so long as we keep to the negative side of the altruistic law: thou shalt do no wrong. That a foreign policy which leads to encroachments upon other States, acts of violence, oppression, misappropriation of their land, and so forth, must consequently incur a moral censure as severe as in the case of individual acts of violence, illegal misappropriations, etc., appears to me to be beyond a doubt. That so many respected and otherwise upright people in our time can hold the opposite, declaring that might is higher than right and that the policy of States lies outside the range of moral law, is very deplorable. It is impossible to imagine anything more reactionary, more hostile to progress, than these theories which cancel the most precious moral conquests of mankind, and take us back to barbarism and the days of club-law.

If, on the contrary, we turn to the positive aspect of the law of charity, the will to service and sacrifice; if we ask about the relation between self-assertion and selfsacrifice, I take it that we have to confess that State and individual stand in different positions, since such collisions of duty occur for the one but not for the other.

This question of self-assertion versus self-sacrifice belongs to the more difficult points, even where individual morality is alone concerned. How far one can go in this respect cannot be discussed here. But let us suppose that the duty of self-sacrifice is, for the individual, stretched to the utmost limit. If we accept this, we must regard the saying of Jesus about turning the left cheek when one is struck on the right cheek, as excluding all defence against unrighteous aggression; and the commandment to love one's neighbour as oneself must be interpreted as enjoining the extreme of

self-forgetting self-sacrifice to promote the welfare of others. But, even if one may make such stern ethical demands upon the individual, we are not justified in applying them to the national State, because it has duties both within and without. The individual can never sacrifice more than himself. But the nation's self-sacrifice would mean loss of happiness and of the capacity for evolution for unborn generations, treachery to the nation's historic mission, treachery to its duty towards mankind.

For the national State, therefore, it is a right and duty to assert itself, to live its own independent life, and within its own territory to develop freely all its capacities for promoting civilisation. And, whatever an ascetic morality may think concerning the individual's right of self-assertion and self-defence, one must concede the right and duty of the State-society to defend itself by force against unjust violence from without, where this cannot be warded off in some other way without the loss of indispensable ideal or material values.

This accords with the circumstance that, of the State's double function, within and without, the first must take precedence as the more important. The individual is placed in the world to work outwards; and the inner building of personality follows as the result of this outer activity. The State, on the contrary, is first and foremost required to work inwards, for the evolution of the society whereof it forms the organisation; and its significance for humanity at large develops as the result of this inner activity. The aphorism, 'Charity begins at home,' applies exactly to the State. For the individual, the great ethical commandment is service for others-self-sacrifice. For the State, on the contrary, self-assertion-within the bounds of law and equity-steps into the foreground, because this self-assertion is the condition of the service it has to perform within-of its work for national development and the good of the society. The State may of course have such a surplus of life and power, that it is able within certain limits to help other State-societies in an entirely unselfish way. It may, and ought, according to its capacity and without any recompense or advantage to itself (alas, how seldom this happens!), to seek to spread the good things of civilisation among uncivilised peoples. It may, without egotistical motives, support another Vol. 232.-No. 460,

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