Chapter VI: Patriotism in the Perfect State

BY B. BOSANQUET

The quality of patriotism is determined by what we desire for our country, as the quality of friendship is determined by what we desire for our friend. And this question—the question what it is that we desire for our country—is of supreme moment to-day, because in the answer given to it, whether by practice or in principle, are rooted the permanent underlying conditions of war and peace.

Assuming then that what is true of principles is true of the corresponding practice, whether or no the actors understand what they are doing, I will ask you to consider with me three typical ideas expressive of what men desire for their country, each of them bearing a distinctive relation to the causes and customs of war, and to the permanent basis of peace.

And in this consideration I hope that we shall also be elucidating an interesting question in the history of recent thought. We shall see how the splendid political philosophy of Germany a hundred years ago has passed on the one hand into her intoxication of to-day, while on the other hand, elsewhere, in face of a more liberal experience, it has found a decisive completion in a human and democratic sense. The three conceptions to which I refer have very much in common, and a great part of the interest of our inquiry, and also perhaps a little practical value which it might possess, depends on noticing very precisely the points at which distinctions become blurred, and the ideas, mostly by mere omission, are apt to slide into one another.

Let us make a beginning, then, with Hegel’s political thought, the German thought of a hundred years ago. At that time the idea of a man’s country, as focussed in the state, was a glorious vision, stimulated largely by Greek conceptions and drawing something from English constitutional experience; while in the existing reality of the Prussian system there was little to catch the eye, and little power, therefore, to narrow the outlook.

Now the essential point for us here to grasp firmly, if we wish to enter into the truth of the matter and its adjacent fallacies, is that Hegel means by the state, not the machine of government, but all that fulfils, in the actual community, the individual’s mind and will. The individual is supposed to see in it the form of life, and more than that, the particular form of sentiment and volition, which his nation has so far worked out for itself, and in which he, the private person, finds the substance of his own mind, and what unites him with others. It includes, of course, the ethical tradition of the society, with the observances and institutions in which it is embodied and preserved; and more especially it is identified with the general will as expressed in the laws and the political constitution. The state, in short, is the ark in which the whole treasure of the individual citizen’s head and heart is preserved and guarded within a world which may be disorderly and hostile.

One may naturally ask, where then does humanity come in, and how recognize the claims of other nations and persons? This is exceedingly important, but not difficult. Your country is held to express the whole form of life for which you stand, and therefore, within that, your moral attitude to humanity and the world in general. If you are an Englishman, you probably object to slavery. But that attitude is not a thing of chance, in which you stand outside your age and country. It is part of the outlook at which, on the whole, England had at a certain time arrived, and which came to individual Englishmen through their participation in the national mind. Here is a point at which a slide into fallacy is too possible. That moral view of the world which you and your state stand up for is one thing. A moral view which considers only your own and your state’s immediate interests is quite another thing; but it is very easy to confuse the two, both in practice and in controversy.

We have said enough to indicate the value which, according to such ideas, the private individual, in theory or by practice, recognizes in his state. Looked at in this way, our country, the state, is simply all we have. Innumerable claims may come to us from outside, but they all come through it and subject to it; just as they all come to us through our own feelings and our own beliefs. Without the state we are nothing and nobody. It is for us the vehicle of the value of the world. It stands for our contribution to the general sum of what humanity has achieved and what makes any life worth living.

So far what we desire for our country, our view of its mission, is to achieve the very best we all are capable of becoming. But there is another side to this same set of ideas.

Obviously, to fulfil this, its necessary mission, the state needs above all things to be _strong_. Men who had lived through Napoleonic times could have no doubt about that. Who indeed was to help a state if it could not help itself? War, then, was the inevitable arbiter, and by the test of war the state must stand or fall. Hegel is primarily appealing to facts when he says that outside the several communities there is no general will. As yet there could not be; for the general will _is_ the will of a community, backed by its whole body, mind, and sentiment. Thus, no one can possibly dictate into what demands separate states shall throw their ultimate honour and self-assertion; and if in these they conflict there is no ultimate solution but war. On one side, we have seen, the state is akin to art, philosophy, and religion; it is mind in a concentrated form. But between it and these other shapes of mind there is the one fundamental distinction. The state is mind ‘in the world’. It is not only our treasure, but it is the ark which carries our treasure. ‘In the world’ right can only prevail through might. Strength in war is therefore the first condition of the state’s fulfilment of its function; and being the first condition, and a condition peculiar to the state among the forms of mind, it is too easily taken as the aim and whole upshot of the state. This again, as we shall see, is a point at which one idea is apt to slide into another.

Therefore, since as yet there can be, outside and above the several states, no general will with a common heart and force, no ‘praetor’—judge representing power—but only at best an ‘arbitrator’, all international laws, treaties, and usages are, at bottom, only agreements of a number of particular wills, the wills of absolute independent bodies. _So far_ nations are to one another, as older writers had said, in a state of nature, like the supposed (but quite imaginary) individuals before Society was invented. Hegel does not say that there cannot be, and are not, humane usages, conventions, rules, and treaties. The whole of international law rests on the principle that treaties are to be observed. But behind all this there is the sheer fact of the separate individual powers, each absolute in its limited area; so that, at bottom, the whole fabric of international rules and customs is just an agreement of separate wills, and not an expression of a single general will. Ultimately, or fundamentally, each of these separate wills is and must be determined by its own conception of its own welfare. This is the difficulty I think in the way of leagues and federations in favour of peace as suggested by Kant and by Norman Angell. They are purely _de facto_. They do not rest upon the spirit of a solid community; and every powerful league tends _ipso facto_ to raise up a powerful counter-league against it, with grave risk of war.

It follows from this that there is a fundamental distinction between the moral position of the private individual who works out the detail of his duty on the basis of recognized rights within a previously ordered and organized society, and that of the state, which has ‘in the world’ to provide and sustain, at all hazards, the organized society within which the individual is to live. The tasks of morals and of international politics are different in principle, though the end to which they co-operate is the same. The immediate task of morals is to live a life, that of international politics is to provide a world within which life can be lived.

The same distinction must be pushed beyond the difference of the tasks into the difference of their possibility. For the private individual it is fairly easy, in the main, at least to _know_ what he should do, and what he should not. He lives within a scheme of recognized rights and obligations; and, starting from his legal position and accepted duties, he can tell whether he is behaving selfishly or generously, rudely or courteously, kindly or unkindly. His lawyer will tell him his legal rights; and it is for him to insist upon them or to surrender them. But in principle the state has no such guide. It is not living out an ordered life, within a recognized scheme. It cannot tell whether it is being less than just, or merely just, or kind and generous. For it every case is under altering conditions and new, and it is sole judge in its own cause. A state may think that it is behaving with superhuman generosity, while its antagonist may think it is behaving like a bandit. There is no complete or detailed scheme and scale of conduct and sentiment to operate as a norm of feeling and judgement. Of course this language may seem exaggerated in face of the well-established usages of international law, and the existence of treaties. But the difference we have mentioned affects them all. _Ultimately_, to reiterate that terrible adverb, which governs the whole argument, it is as we say. A private person has the letter and spirit of his moral world to live up to, and on the main lines and choices of life there is a wealth of recognized obligations which, I do not say tell him what to do, but certainly warn him what he is doing. A state is sailing a sea but slightly charted, and what marks the charts do furnish are mostly recent and depend on a revocable consent. As a supreme power, it has a responsibility for every choice, of which no precedents nor external recommendations can divest it. At every step it is making a new world.

Thus, in such an idea of patriotism as we have been describing, the attitude to war is favourable on the whole. There is, it suggests, an element in the world which is transitory and accidental, the element of temporal life and temporal goods. It is natural and necessary that accident should prey upon the accidental, and that contingent values should thus be distinguished from substantial. War is the fiery test of reality, and the maker of nations. ‘In the world’ accident is necessary and has its good. Here is a striking passage; not a complete survey of the question, but, I think, requiring consideration, and showing the conviction embodied in the attitude we have tried to portray:

‘Of course, war brings insecurity of possessions, but this actual insecurity is only a necessary movement. We hear from the pulpit so much of the uncertainty, vanity, and fickleness of temporal things; but every one thinks as he hears it, however touching may be the eloquence, “_I_ shall manage to keep what is mine”. But now if this uncertainty confronts them in grim earnest in the shape of hussars with naked sabres, then the touching spirit of edification, in the face of the very thing it foretold, betakes itself to hurling curses at the victors. But in spite of all, wars take place when the occasion demands it; the crops grow again; and babble is mute before the grim iterations of history.’[23]

Before leaving these ideas of a hundred years ago, it is worth while to note the general temper of intellectual Germany in that great age. It was full, no doubt, of self-assertion, not unbecoming to a nation conscious of immense capacities. But it was sympathetic and receptive. No men ever worked harder to educate themselves in the widest experience of humanity than Goethe and his contemporaries. Their feeling is fairly expressed in some verses addressed by Schiller to Goethe, on the exceptional occasion of a play by Voltaire being performed at the Weimar theatre. We see in them the delicate balance of self-assertion and receptivity. Here is a rough version:

To home-born art this stage is consecrated,
No more are stranger idols worshipped here;
The laurel we display with heart elated
On _our_ poetic mount its growth did rear;
To art’s high fane, himself initiated,
Boldly the German genius has drawn near;
And on the track of Briton and of Greek
Has set his face a purer fame to seek.

The Briton and the Greek are Shakespeare and Aristotle, or perhaps the Greek Tragedians. And the same types of experience, English and Hellenic, were at work in the conception of patriotism we have portrayed. It is not, Hegel says, emphatically, the mere occasional readiness for extreme sacrifices. It is the recognition of the community as our substance throughout all the detailed functions of life. We shall further see the supreme value of this apparently prosaic view.

Now we need not add many words in explaining how this attitude of the great time has degenerated into the creed of violence and self-interest of which we hear to-day. It is essentially the passage of a large and many-sided philosophical doctrine into the hands of ignorant and biased amateurs, soldiers, historians, politicians.[24] Well, all philosophy is dangerous, for it blinks no side of the truth, and any one of its statements, taken by itself and with bias, may act as a mighty strong wine or as a high explosive.

It is enough to recall the two points in the great German philosophy at which we noted how readily one idea slides into another. One is where it says that a state is and can be determined only by its own good. We tried to explain that the thing is a truism. Its good is the form of life and feeling which it has made and chosen, and includes its relations to others. But if for good (Wohl) you read exclusive self-interest, the thing is done. A great idea slides before your eyes into the meanest of worldly maxims. So with the other point. As guardian of a treasure, the state must be strong in war. But it is different when you say that its strength in war sets it free to sully at its will the treasure it has to guard.

To make these two transitions is the same thing as to drop out from the conception of patriotism all that we said about the positive values of which the state is guardian. In a huge country, intoxicated with its new material prosperity, and even in the realm of intellect so busy with myriad specialities as to be deafened to voices from without by the clamour of its own contending schools, such a transition seems almost natural.

But yet, when this transition is made, the public conscience, the compass of the difficult voyage, is gone. Everything depended on its recognition of the supreme values within its own good; and the change leaves them as mere names for whatever can be effected by force. And now, all the _de facto_ truths which the great philosophy conceded with regard to international conventions return upon us with crushing force. You can find parallels in Hegel, as we saw, for much of the language, e. g., of the _Book of War_, about mere usages and conventions. The only difference is that the national conscience—which makes Hegel say, for instance, that Europe is in actual humane behaviour a single family—the national conscience is now deleted from the theory.

So by mere omission and exaggeration, this great idea of patriotism is totally perverted, and we are brought to the point that what a man desires for his country is military supremacy to be used without scruple in the promotion of its exclusive interest.

This was the second of the three attitudes or ideas of patriotism which we meant to consider. We have observed how it might arise by a heated and narrowed conception of the first, under the intoxication of new achievements, leading to new temptations and ambitions.

But now, recurring for a moment to the philosophy of the great time, let us consider a third expression of patriotism, to which it has given rise in a wholly different atmosphere.

It was a conviction, held in common by the two forms of patriotism we have been considering, that war is a necessary accident, arising out of the very nature of the state as a separate sovereign power exposed to accident, and therefore, something to which a state is liable because and in as far as it is what a state should be. Now a great deal in this idea may seem to us a truism. States _are_ particular independent bodies, themselves sole ultimate judges of their differences and their honour. No independent state (as Pericles said) _will_ brook an order from another state; if it does, its independence is gone. And on such a point there can be no arbitration. War _is_ the ultimate arbiter, and therefore springs from this very nature of states; and it _does_ behove states to be strong. And for war, as for all other evils and accidents, there _is_ a good deal to be said. Each of them by itself is clearly a thing to be fought against, but without any of them at all—well, life would very soon generate new ones.

But a further question has been raised, and seems worth pursuing. Is not a wrong done somewhere, when lives are sacrificed in war? Certainly it is not murder, for it is not unlawful killing; but again, it is not merely like an earthquake. It comes from human conduct somewhere and somewhen. We may not be able to apportion the guilt of it, but it might be worth inquiry whether the conduct could not be changed. Perhaps our analysis has hitherto not gone far enough. _After_ differences have broken out between independent sovereign states all we have said holds good—the separate wills of separate bodies, the mere outward agreements with no deep-seated impartial will and power behind them, the usages and rules at the mercy of the individual conscience of states, which in some cases appears to be an absent factor.

Well, but cannot we go further back? _Is_ it in the nature of states that differences should constantly be arising between them? The state is there to be the condition of organized good life for the inhabitants of a certain territory. Is it a property of this function that different states should be continually liable to be at variance? Is tendency to war really a feature of states in respect of what they are as states? Or is it not rather perhaps a feature of them in so far as they fail to be states? To organize good life in a certain territory seems to have nothing in it prima facie which should necessitate variance between the bodies charged with the task in one place and in another.

When, in the light of this question, we look closer at the facts, what stares us in the face is that the cause of external conflict as a rule is not internal organization, but internal disorganization. The quarrelsome man is not well organized in his mind; he is ill organized—certainly in mind, probably in body. Plato indeed laid his finger on the place, though you might criticize his explanation in some particulars. The origin of war, he says, is when states become internally diseased; the more they are distracted within, the more they come into conflict without.

Let us think further of this. People who are satisfied do not want to make war; and in a well-organized community people are satisfied. War must arise from dissatisfied elements in a community; people who have not got what they want within (or have it but are afraid of losing it) and so look for profit or for security in adventures without. War belongs to a state, then, ultimately, not in so far as it is a state, but in so far as it is not a state.

All sorts of causes of dissatisfaction or alarm lead to external conflict. There may be privileged classes directly interested in resisting the better organization of the community; in maintaining, for instance, an obsolete franchise and the power of a military caste. There may be oppressed religious persuasions, oppressed nationalities, provinces torn from the allegiance they prefer. All of these are likely to throw their hopes and ambitions outside the state which formally includes them, and to produce resentments against it in other groups. Then, more subtle and more modern, there are the whole set of restrictions upon human intercourse which depend on the idea that the gain of one community is the loss of another. All of these make doubly for war; they make privileges at home, which turn the mind of the privileged class away from internal organization and towards external aggression; and they make exclusions abroad, turning the mind of the excluded classes to retaliation both in kind and by arms. Exclusion reaches the climax of its vicious effect when it becomes an affair of what I shall call for short ‘passive markets’—such, that is, as raise the problem of the prior possession of uncivilized regions which the white man can exploit at pleasure, and at pleasure close against others.

I must not pause to analyse at length the claims supported by that blessed word ‘expansion’. So good a historian as Dr. Holland Rose[25] seems to accept the increase of Germany’s population by 50 per cent. in one generation as a sufficient reason for a vigorous expansion policy. But surely we must distinguish between the duties really imposed upon a state by such an increase with a view to organization of life, and the adventures and exclusive exploitations for which it may be the pretext, but which do nothing serious to aid the work of organization, while they fill the world with monopolies and with terrors of aggression.

And again, it appears only just to remark, following for example a recent article by Sir Harry Johnston,[26] confirmed in this respect by Mr. Morel,[26] that when in a huge world-empire there is advocated a policy of commercial exclusion directed against other countries, these countries will anticipate being gravely prejudiced in their legitimate foreign trade. Then follows the desire on their part to possess themselves of exclusive markets, and unending fears and resentments are bred on every side. That the practical and theoretical inspiration of the policy so advocated had its source in some of the countries threatened by it, would have made it, if carried out, an interesting retribution, but would not have diminished its danger.

Surely, for the legitimate expansion demanded by increase of population the ‘open door’ is the right and effective principle. It will meet both the need of trade, and in the last resort, the need of space and elbow-room for population. Under it no one’s expansion can be a threat to any one, or produce monopolies which will hinder social organization, and turn men’s minds to aggression. And it must also be noted that the loss of citizen population, which is sometimes complained of, is not really met by mere increase of territorial possessions. It is largely due to the very military system which is relied on to remedy its causes—in a word, to defective social organization, which lays unwelcome burdens on the ordinary citizen, and even fails to utilize territorial expansion as an outlet for population.

It must be borne in mind, however, that the exclusive policy advocated within our Empire was decisively rejected, and the open door, the main thing demanded by expansion elsewhere, was as decisively maintained. Even territorial acquisition in tropical regions, though it has practically been of little value to the increasing populations of European countries, this country has not obstructed, and I hope and trust that it will maintain its unenvious policy in this respect up to the limits of possibility in the settlement after the war.

I have no right to lecture on economics, but the general principles which I have been advocating, of absence of monopoly at home, and the ‘open door’ abroad, fall, I think, within the competence of a student of politics. Restrictions on human intercourse are prima facie injurious, and demand the very strongest justification if they are to be tolerated.

And on a kindred point, really beyond my competence, I will merely put a question. Presupposing a sufficiency of external trade to pay for food and raw materials, is not the home market the most important and the most secure? When it is not so, is not the purchasing power of the most numerous classes short of what it should be? And through directing the minds of the leaders of trade to external adventure, is not such a state of things a constant incentive to exclusive exploitation and to war?

I will end by summarizing as shortly as I can the conclusions which follow from our argument—both what we must admit, and what we are anxious to maintain.

(1) We must admit that states, in consequence of their separateness and absoluteness, are so _far_ in a relation of nature to each other, though this is mitigated by humane conventions and usages. If differences arise, the ultimate arbiter is war, which is therefore necessary to the function of states as now existing. While this is so, international politics must differ from individual morality as maintaining a world differs from living in one.

(2) We must admit that when, on this basis, it is attempted to secure peace according to the rule _Si vis pacem, para bellum_, the project is self-contradictory. As principles are the same for all parties, it implies the condition of securing peace to be that of any two opponent powers each must be at the same time stronger than the other. This contradiction is the root of the race in armaments.

(3) We must admit that, on this basis, no league or federation _ad hoc_ can secure peace. Every such league must, sooner or later (being a mere convention of separate wills) arouse a counter-league. Such arrangements, I believe, are fertile of wars.

(4) We maintain that the fundamental root of peace lies in the recognition that war belongs to states not in as far as they are states, but in as far as they are not states; granted that their actual defects to-day make the reverse of this appear to be the truth.

(5) We maintain that the patriotism which is the source of peace therefore lies in a thorough everyday loyalty to the state as a means of harmonious internal organization excluding privilege and monopoly, and in our desire for our country of those supreme goods which are not diminished by sharing. Trade and industry, though acquisitions of material wealth, take on this character when conducted on an impartial and rational basis. This view agrees with the great German philosophy in its estimate of true patriotism, but goes further in analysing the relation of such patriotism to the causes of war.[27]

(6) We maintain that in a group or world of states, possessed by such a patriotism, and therefore organized so as to be free from causes of resentment, and united in aims and methods which admit of harmony, it is conceivable that a true general will (not a mere external convention) might grow up which should be solidly supported by the body, spirit, and sentiment of all the communities.[28] In such a case a genuine international moral world would be created, and international politics would approach more nearly to the nature of private morality, though they could never be the same. In some respects, indeed, the state, as more impartial, might maintain a higher standard than the individual, as happens on occasion even to-day.[29]

(7) We maintain that the patriotism which is the desire for our country of those supreme goods which are not diminished by sharing, is a guarantee of a right estimate of values, and therefore of justice and reasonable organization in dealing with wealth and power both at home and abroad.

Such a patriotism, desiring and sustaining the perfection of the state in its organizing functions as a state, is the only force which is essentially directed to destroying the causes of war. Even those intangible springs of hostility, the jealousy and vanity of nations, cannot ultimately exist in the same world with such a patriotism.

This temper of mind offers the only prospect of a solid general will including groups of states. As its expression, but not without it, leagues of states for the enforcement of peace might do good service. Its detailed operation in such a crisis as will confront the nations of Europe at the close of the war, will consist in a sincere and persevering effort to secure everywhere the removal of all such causes of internal distraction as have been specified above.

By the merest accident in the world, the last word in this course of lectures has fallen to me. And I feel irresistibly impelled to use the opportunity, well knowing how inadequately, in making an appeal to you in the spirit of a conviction which more and more possesses my mind.

I will try to explain it thus.

It was proposed some weeks ago that there should be a day of national humiliation. The highest authority in the land rejected that form of expression, and I believe that we all approved of the rejection.

No, we do not want a day of national humiliation. If ever it is right for a country to hold up its head, it is right for our country to-day. But nevertheless there is something, not wholly different from this, for which in the spirit of our argument I would earnestly appeal. There is a way in which every one of us can do something, and even can do much, to promote the solid foundations of a stable peace. I repeat that we do not want a national humiliation. But we at least who must stay at home have a need and duty of individual and national self-examination. It cannot indeed be a duty incumbent on the men at the front—they have other matters to attend to—but, most remarkably, the evil temper against which it is directed is not on the whole the temper of the men at the front. But for us—it is a thing we can do, and a thing we should do. We should examine ourselves—is our patriotism such as to lead towards the perfectly organized state? Do we desire for our country and ourselves only the best things we know, beauty and truth and love and wholesome living? Do we seek, by this infallible criterion of values, to guarantee both ourselves and our country against the corrupt self-seeking which is the ultimate cause of war?

Right as our cause is to-day, has not the wrong which we are labouring to undo been fostered by ourselves as by others, if not in our case by direct international action, yet by the exhibition of a jealous and menacing spirit of rivalry? Do we not constantly endeavour to lower other nations in our private and public talk, in the world of letters, and in trade? Is our journalism, is our literature of the war—though I gladly acknowledge some most excellent things in both—yet are they on the whole such as we can look upon with satisfaction?

I am entirely without sympathy for the attempts made by a few among our learned men, and by very many who are far from learned, to belittle the intellectual and moral debt of Europe to Germany, and to prove for instance that Goethe—_Goethe_—was a great exemplar of selfishness. And horrible things as I believe her armies have done in the war, yet the attitude which demands that when peace returns Germany or Prussia should be intentionally humiliated and excluded from the European family of nations, to my own feeling is actually repellent, and to my judgement is an attitude of self-satisfaction, morally dangerous in the extreme, and politically absurd. Surely, whatever others may do, we on our side should fight our terrific battle like gentlemen, without rancour or venom, and with eagerness, above all, when the fight is done, to recognize the merits of our adversary which both his passion and ours have for the moment travestied, and to renew the international bonds of commerce, science, art, and philosophy. We ought not to fall below the standard set us by our private soldiers upon Christmas Day, and indeed, as we hear, upon every day of the war.

Punishment and humiliation let us leave to consequences and to history. Belligerents are not good moral judges of each other. Much of what we hear to-day in anticipation of the sequel of the war brings irresistibly to my mind the profound wisdom of George Meredith’s warning against the ridiculous attempt at a union of ill temper and policy.

The patriotism we have attempted to portray implies and demands that we should desire for our country, not a triumph of vanity and self-interest, but a share in such a solid work of organization as shall be most favourable to the performance of a true state’s function in _every_ community of Europe. Thus alone can we deserve well of our country, and our country of the world.

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Footnote 1:

_L’Orientation religieuse de la France actuelle_, pp. 62, 63.

Footnote 2:

_Practical Ethics_, pp. 64, 65.

Footnote 3:

These sentences are taken from an address, ‘Ueber das Verhältniss der
Politik zur Moral’, published in 1875, among the _Reden und Aufsätze_
of Gustav Rümelin, Chancellor of the University of Tübingen.

Footnote 4:

The mistake of attempting to deal with both subjects was discovered
too late to be remedied, but some remarks on the second which were
omitted in the delivery of the lecture are here printed.

Footnote 5:

The reader to whom discussions of the subject of the preceding
paragraphs are new, and who desires to pursue them, is recommended to
refer to F. H. Bradley, _Ethical Studies_, v and vi; Green,
_Principles of Political Obligation_, in _Works_, vol. ii, or as
separately published; Bosanquet, _Philosophical Theory of the State_.
The line followed in these books runs back through Hegel to Plato and
Aristotle, on whose political philosophy see vol. i of Newman’s
edition of Aristotle’s _Politics_. My short statement does not
profess, of course, to represent the views of any one of the writers
named.

Footnote 6:

‘By nature’ here does not mean what the reader is likely to suppose.
On Spinoza’s doctrine see Green, op. cit.

Footnote 7:

Essay _Of Empire_. Cf. _Of Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates_. That
Bacon should be thought a great _moral_ guide seems strange, but his
political essays (notably that _Of Plantations_), like his others, are
of course full of wisdom.

Footnote 8:

I introduce the word in order to indicate the danger of using it. It
inevitably suggests an antithesis to something higher (‘duty’ or
‘principle’), and so is taken to mean, not the end of the state, but
some subordinate part of that end.

Footnote 9:

What is said here of slavery was suggested by a passage in Green, op.
cit.

Footnote 10:

Regarding this ideal, and others less ambitious, there is always the
question whether they do not presuppose a moral progress which would
make an actual organization needless.

Footnote 11:

The number of British embassies and legations abroad is fifty-seven
(Whitaker).

Footnote 12:

It is ridiculous to give this name to the state’s normal duty of
developing its own life.

Footnote 13:

This cannot be called an unconditional duty, if that means a duty
which in no circumstances can be superseded by a higher duty (_every_
duty is unconditional except as against a higher). I honour the German
Chancellor for his frank statement that the violation of Belgian
neutrality was an ‘Unrecht’ (a violation of law; i.e. something which
is almost always, but not always, wrong). What was false was the
description, as ‘a matter of life and death’, of the supposed superior
duty taken to justify the supersession of the inferior. And what was
revolting, and only too significant, was the revelation, in the phrase
‘a scrap of paper’, of the belief that the supersession of a duty is a
trifle.

Footnote 14:

See the introduction to the translation of Kant’s essay (1893, now
republished). There is a slighter sketch in W. A. Phillips’
instructive _Confederation of Europe_, 1914.

Footnote 15:

The conduct of the ‘Concert of Europe’ in recent years may be
contrasted very favourably with that of the Holy Alliance, and may
well be taken as a good augury; and it is better to emphasize this
than to dwell on the defects of the Concert. At the same time, one
must remember that it has been mainly concerned with troubles arising
from the decay of the Turkish Empire, and that this Empire has not
been considered as a full member of the European ‘Family’, and so has
not been treated as one of the United States of Europe would have to
be.

Footnote 16:

I do not remember, and have not found, any passage in his writings
which shows in what precise form he conceived this ideal.

Footnote 17:

The latter, for example, in the instructive little book called _The
War and Democracy_, by members of that admirable society, ‘The
Workers’ Educational Association’.

Footnote 18:

As regards its social spirit and its standard of social values,
England can hardly be called democratic. It is probably less so than
France was under the third Napoleon.

Footnote 19:

I must point out that it by no means follows from the doctrine of the
state’s moral end that the state should promulgate or encourage one
particular view regarding the duties of its citizens or its own
future. On the contrary, one may hold that doctrine and yet hold that
the state should abstain from doing this and, however much it may
support or enforce education, should, within the necessary limits,
leave ‘ideas’ to prevail or fail through the process of free
competition.

Footnote 20:

In his lectures on the Philosophy of History, Hegel spoke of
‘world-historical’ individuals and peoples, who represent for a time
that ‘world-spirit’ whose ‘right’ is supreme; and perhaps some rash
German reader might cry, ‘Yes, France a century ago, and Germany now.’
But he will not find a word in Hegel to countenance his claim; and if
he builds his hopes on military power he might ponder Hegel’s final
sentence about the astounding victories of Napoleon: ‘Never was the
powerlessness of victory shown in a clearer light than then.’ I do not
mean to imply that, according to Hegel, what we call the best
intentions are bound to prevail. No philosopher was less inclined to
ignore painful facts. His whole philosophy might even be called an
attempt to understand and justify them.

Footnote 21:

My indebtedness in this Paper to Bishop Butler will be obvious to all
who know his sermons on ‘Resentment’ and on ‘The Forgiveness of
Injuries’.

Footnote 22:

Among these faults I should count our failure to intervene in the
Schleswig-Holstein War.

Footnote 23:

Hegel, _Philosophy of Right_, s. 324.

Footnote 24:

The professors, it is said, have been mobilized in the service of
Germany. And on the general merits of the dispute this is so. But I am
not aware of evidence that philosophers of repute have adopted, say,
Bernhardi’s or Treitschke’s views of justification by force. Eucken,
though he stands up for his country, does so partly on the ground that
Bernhardi is not representative, and we must be allowed to discount
the popular use of hard sayings from Nietzsche, though he has very
probably misled the multitude. Nietzsche is not a thinker whom he that
runs may read. Wundt, I think, is simply misinformed and credulous,
while strongly affected by national bias and vanity. I may add that
the idea of ‘culture’ in the earlier period is right and fine. I cite
from Kant what is probably the original account of it: ‘We are
_civilized_ to the point of wearisomeness, into all sorts of social
courtesy and politeness. But before we can be held to be _moralized_
there is a very long way to go. For culture implies more than
civilization, it implies the idea of morality.’ Kant’s _Werke_ (R.)
7,329. He is censuring the expenditure on ‘expansion’, as thwarting
the spiritual growth of the citizens.

Footnote 25:

_Manchester Lectures on Germany in 19th Century_, 2nd. ed. 19.

Footnote 26:

_New Statesman_, February 6 and 13.

Footnote 27:

See T. H. Green, _Lectures on Principles of Political Obligation_, ss.
157–75.

Footnote 28:

Lord Haldane’s Montreal address, ‘Higher Nationality’, republished in
_The Conduct of Life_, Murray, 1914.

Footnote 29:

Green, op. cit., s. 175.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.