(Source: Introduction to Contemporary Civilization in the West, New York: Columbia University Press, 1954. pp. 550-566)
Probably the most eloquent apologist of Prussian militarism was a non-Prussian civilian who as a boy had been disappointed by the liberal failure of 1848-49: Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-1896), university professor of history and political science. His development is an early example of the conversion of German intellectuals from the nebulous idealism of the Frankfurt Assembly to hard-boiled Bismarckian realism. The delegates to that assembly expressed the feelings of most political-minded Germans only in so far as they advocated national unification and moral leadership. Their liberalism, however, had little appeal to the masses and failed to shake the ingrained convictions of the real leading class in Prussia and elsewhere aristocracy of great landowners, officers, and bureaucrats. These men clung to the feudal tradition of associating the virtues of courage, honor, and nobility with the practice of war, and had little sympathy for the abstract ideologies of the unarmed "professors." Events seemed to prove that they were right. The 1848-49 liberal revolution collapsed and Frederick William IV, Prussia's conservative king, had to bow in 1850 to the apparently overwhelming might of Austria, and was forced to restore the loose Confederation of 1815.
It was at this time that Treitschke, the son of a Saxon army officer whose forebears were Slavic, concluded that Austria's opposition and the local interests of the petty German states precluded unification except by methods which Bismarck adopted later - blood and iron. First as a student, then as a teacher at the Universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg he advocated unity under Prussian military leadership. It is worth noting that Von Treitschke himself, like Goebbels - Hitler's "intellectual" apologist was physically disqualified from military service. Somewhat later most of Germany rallied around Bismarck when he defeated Denmark, Austria, and France with an army he had built up with undemocratic means and against the opposition of Prussian liberals. Tile renunciation was made easier for the liberals by the fact that Bismarck then adopted for the whole of Germany an ostensibly liberal constitution with a Lower House elected by universal suffrage. But the ministers of the unified Reich were responsible only to the Emperor - not to the House - and the Prussian Parliament, elected in a much less democratic way, continued to play an important part owing to the fact that Prussia was by far the largest state in Germany. Most of the "liberals" became "national liberals' " supporting the successful Iron Chancellor, and most of the German professors turned from dreamy mysticism to the investigation of facts "as they actually are," to quote the expression of another prominent historian, Von Ranke. Nevertheless, they continued to regard themselves, like Treitschke, as liberals and idealists in matters where national interests were not threatened. The continuity with the romantic tradition was preserved by the influence of Hegel's personification of the State.
Treitschke also drew inspiration from Savigny's idea of the nation as a continuing entity - an element in time as well as space and an institution in which traditions and sentiment and honor were more vital than material things and money bags. This idea received added support from Fifichte and other romantic nationalists, from whom Treitschke also inherited his reverence for the greatness and uniqueness of German culture and his belief in a German historical mission.
With this characteristic blend of professed liberalism, of mystic State worship, and of frank, brutal acceptance of reality Treitschke struck many responsive chords in the common man. His prejudices made him no less popular in Germany than his insight into social behavior, and it was said of him that he expressed what other men felt but feared to say or were ashamed to admit. In later years his anti-Socialist views brought him still closer to the Conservatives, and his anti-Semitism placed him in the large group of intellectuals and clergy-men who were rebuked for this attitude by Germany's greatest historian, Theodore Mommsen, and by Bismarck himself.
The succeeding generation, while deeply impressed by Treitschke's outlook, was not unaffected by the pacifist trends which seemed to prevail in Europe in the prosperous years of the early twentieth century. No nation had made such tremendous economic gains as Germany, in spite of the pessimistic prophecies of List and other romantic asserters of the right of an overcrowded people to expand. Emigration from Germany had come to a standstill. The "softening" of the national temper, however, was denounced by the German ultra nationalists, who were often roused to glaring enthusiasm by the intermittent warlike outbursts of Kaiser William II. A prominent spokesman of the reaction against "materialistic" pacifism was General Friedreich von Bernhardi. In a widely read book Germany and the Next War (1912), he piled up quotations from earlier German writers, from Frederick the Great to Goethe, William von Humboldt and Treitschke himself, to show that war always had been regarded as noble and necessary. Schiller, for instance had said that "Man is stunted by peaceful days - in idle repose his courage decays; - Law is the weakling's game." Moreover, Bernhardi employed, to prove his point, the Darwinian concepts of struggle for existence and survival of the fittest. "Desire for peace," Bernhardi said, "has rendered most civilized nations anaemic, marks a decay of spirit and political courage. . . . Strong, healthy and flourishing nations increase in - numbers. From a given moment they require a continual expansion of their frontiers . . . for the accommodation of their surplus population. . . . New territory must, as a rule, be obtained at the cost of its possessors that is to say, by conquest, which thus becomes a law of necessity. . . . Might is at once the supreme right, and the dispute is to what is right is decided by the arbitrament of war. War gives a biologically just decision."
Treitschke never published his lectures on Politics. After his death they were compiled from his rough notes and the careful stenographic records of some of his students. They were printed in 1897. The following selections have been taken from a translation by Blanche Dugdale and Torben de Bille, published by Constable and Company, London, 1916.
POLITICS
THE STATE IDEA
THE STATE is the people, legally united as an independent entity. By the word "people" we understand briefly a number of families permanently living side by side. This definition implies that the State is primordial and necessary, that it is as enduring as history, and no less essential to mankind than speech. . . .
The human race was once for all created with certain innate qualities amongst which speech and political genius must undoubtedly be counted. . . .
If, then, political capacity is innate in man, and is to be further developed, it is quite inaccurate to call the State a necessary evil. We have to deal with it as a lofty necessity of Nature. Even as the possibility of building up a civilization is dependent upon the limitation of our powers combined with the gift of reason, so also the State depends upon our inability to live alone. This Aristotle has already demonstrated. The State, says he, arose in order to make life possible; it endured to make good life possible.
This natural necessity of a constituted order is further displayed by the fact that the political institutions of a people, broadly speaking, appear to be the external forms which are the inevitable outcome of its inner life. Just as its language is not the product of caprice but the immediate expression of its most deep-rooted attitude towards the world, so also its political institutions regarded as a whole, and the whole spirit of its jurisprudence, are the symbols of its political genius and of the outside destinies which have helped to shape the gifts which Nature bestowed. . . .
We may say with certainty that the evolution of the State is, broadly speaking, nothing but the necessary outward form which the inner life of a people bestows upon itself, and that peoples attain to that form of government which Their moral capacity enables them to reach. Nothing can be more inverted than the opinion that constitutional laws were artificially evolved in opposition to the conception of a Natural Law. Ultramontanes and Jacobins both start with the assumption that the legislation of a modern State is the work of sinful man. They thus display their total lack of reverence for the objectively revealed Will of God, as unfolded in the life of the State.
When we assert the evolution of the State to be something inherently necessary, we do not thereby deny the power of genius or of creative Will in history. For it is of the essence of political genius to be national. There has never been an example of the contrary. The summit of historical fame was never attained by Wallenstein because he was never a national hero, but a Czech who played the German for the sake of expediency. He was, like Napoleon, a splendid Adventurer of history. The truly great maker of history always stands upon a national basis. This applies equally to men of letters. He only is a great writer who so writes that all his countrymen respond, "Thus it must be. Thus we all feel,"-who is in fact a microcosm of his nation.
If we have grasped that the State is the people legally constituted we thereby imply that it aims at establishing a permanent tradition throughout the Ages. A people does not only comprise the individuals living side by side, but also the successive generations of the same stock. This is one of the truths which Materialists dismiss as a mystical doctrine, and yet it is an obvious truth. Only the continuity of human history makes man [ Gk. a political animal] He alone stands upon the achievements of his forebears, and deliberately continues their work in order to transmit it more perfect to his children and children's children. Only a creature like man, needing aid and endowed with reason, can have a history; and it is one of the ineptitudes of the Materialists to speak of animal States. It is just a play upon words to talk of a bee State. Beasts merely reproduce unconsciously what has been from all time, and none but human beings can possess a form of government which is calculated to endure. There never was a form of Constitution without a law of inheritance. The rational basis for this is obvious, for by far the largest part of a nation's wealth was not created by the contemporary generation. The continuous legalized intention of the past, exemplified in the law of inheritance, must remain a factor in the distribution of property amongst posterity. In a nation's continuity with bygone generations lies the specific dignity of the State. It is consequently a contradiction to say that a distribution of property should be regulated by the deserts of the existing generation. Who would respect the banners of a State if the power of memory had fled? There are cases when the shadows of the past are invoked against the perverted will of the present, and prove more potent. Today in Alsace we appeal from the distorted opinions of the Francophobes to Geiler von Kaisersberg and expect to see his spirit revive again. No one who does not recognize the continued action of the past upon the present can ever understand the nature and necessity of War. Gibbon calls Patriotism "the living sense of my own interest in society"; but if we simply look upon the State as intended to secure life and property to the individual, how comes it that the individual will also sacrifice life and property to the State? It is a false conclusion that wars are waged for the sake of material advantage. Modern wars are not fought for the sake of booty. Here the high moral ideal of national honour is a factor handed down from one generation to another, enshrining something positively sacred, and compelling the individual to sacrifice himself to it. This ideal is above all price and cannot be reduced to pounds, shillings, and pence. Kant says, "Where a price can be paid, an equivalent can be substituted. It is he which is above price and which consequently admits of no equivalent, that possesses real value." Genuine patriotism is the consciousness of cooperating with the body-politic, of being rooted in ancestral achievements and of transmitting them to descendants. Fiche has finely said, "Individual man sees in his country the realization of his earthly immortality."
This involves that the State has a personality, primarily in the juridical, and secondly in the politico-moral sense. Every man who is able to exercise his will in law has a legal personality. Now it is quite clear that the State possesses this deliberate will; nay more, that it has the juridical personality in the most complete sense. In State treaties it is the will of the State which is expressed, not the personal desires of the individuals who conclude them, and the treaty is binding as long as the contracting State exists. When a State is incapable of enforcing its will, or of maintaining law and order at home and prestige abroad, it becomes an anomaly and falls a prey either to anarchy or a foreign enemy. The State therefore must have the most emphatic will that can be imagined. . .
Treat the State as a person, and the necessary and rational multiplicity of States follows. just as in individual life the ego implies the existence of the non-ego, so it does in the State. The state is power, precisely in order to assert itself as against other equally independent powers. War and the administration of justice are the chief tasks of even the most barbaric States. But these tasks are only conceivable where a plurality of States are found existing side by side. Thus the idea of one universal empire is odious-the ideal of a State coextensive with humanity is no ideal at all. In a single State the whole range of culture could never be fully spanned; no single people could unite the virtues of aristocracy and democracy. All nations, like all individuals, have their limitations, but it is exactly in the abundance of these limited qualities that the genius of humanity is exhibited. The rays of the Divine light are manifested, broken by countless facets among the separate peoples, each one exhibiting, another picture and another idea of the whole. Every people has a right to believe that certain attributes of the Divine reason are exhibited in it to their fullest perfection. No people ever attains to national consciousness without overrating itself. The Germans are always in danger of enervating their nationality through possessing too little of this rugged pride. The average German has very little political pride; but even our Philistines generally revel in the intellectual boast of the freedom and universality of the German spirit, and this is well, for such a sentiment is necessary if a people is to maintain and assert itself.
Since in so many nations the race becomes exhausted, and since various types of national culture exist side by side, single peoples can refresh themselves from the sources of other countries' intellectual vigour after a barren period of their own, as the Germans did from the French and English after the Thirty Years' War. The daily life of nations is founded upon mutual give and take, and since Christianity has brought this fact to universal recognition we may lay down that modern civilizations will not perish in the same sense as those of the ancient world, which lacked this knowledge. But it is no mere kindly interchange which takes place; the supreme need is to preserve what has been won. Historical greatness depends less on the first discovery or invention than on forming and keeping. The terrible saying, Sic vos non vobis [Roughly, What you do is not done for yourself.], is once more vindicated. How tragic is the fate of Spain, which discovered the New World and to-day can show no trophy of that mighty civilizing achievement. Her one remaining advantage is that Spanish is still the language of millions beyond the seas. Other nations advanced and snatched from the Iberian races the fruits of their labour, first the Dutch and then the English. The features of history are virile, unsuited to sentimental or feminine natures. Brave peoples alone have an existence, an evolution or a future; the weak and cowardly perish, and perish justly. The grandeur of history lies in the per- petual conflict of nations, and it is simply foolish to desire the suppression of their rivalry. Mankind has ever found it to be so. . . .
Further, if we examine our definition of the State as "the people legally united as an independent entity," we find that it can be more briefly put thus: "The State is the public force for Offence and Defence." It is, above all, Power which makes its will to prevail, it is not the totality of the people as Hegel assumes in his deification of it. The nation is not entirely comprised in the State, but the State protects and embraces the people's life, regulating its external aspects on every side. It does not ask primarily for opinion, but demands obedience, and its laws must be obeyed whether willingly or no.
A step forward has been taken when the mute obedience of the citizens is transformed into a rational inward assent, but it cannot be said that this is absolutely necessary. Powerful, highly-developed Empires have stood for centuries without its aid. Submission is what the State primarily requires; it insists upon acquiescence; its very essence is the accomplishment of its will. . . . A State which can no longer carry out its purpose collapses in anarchy. . . .
The State is not an Academy of Arts. If it neglects its strength in order to promote the idealistic aspirations of man, it repudiates its own nature and perishes. This is in truth for the State equivalent to the sin against the Holy Ghost, for it is indeed a mortal error in the State to subordinate itself for sentimental reasons to a foreign Power, as we Germans have often done to England. . . .
We have described the State as an independent force. This pregnant theory of independence implies firstly so absolute a moral supremacy that the State cannot legitimately tolerate any power above its own, and secondly a temporal freedom entailing a variety of material resources adequate to its protection against hostile influences. Legal sovereignty, the State's complete independence of any other earthly power, is so rooted in its nature that it may be said to be its very standard and criterion. . . .
Human communities do exist which in their own fashion pursue aims no less lofty than those of the State, but which must be legally subject to it in their outward relations with the world. It is obvious that contradictions must arise, and that two such authorities, morally but not legally equal, must sometimes collide with each other. Nor is it to be wished that the conflicts between Church and State should wholly cease, for if they did one party or the other would be soulless and dead, like the Russian Church for example. Sovereignty, however, which is the peculiar attribute of the State, is of necessity supreme, and it is a ridiculous inconsistency to speak of a superior and inferior authority within it. The truth remains that the essence of the State consists in its incompatibility with any power over it. How proudly and truly statesmanlike is Gustavus Adolphus' exclamation, "I recognize no power over me but God and the conqueror's sword." This is so unconditionally true that we see at once that it cannot be the destiny of mankind to form a single State, but that the ideal towards which we strive is a harmonious comity of nations, who, concluding treaties of their own free will, admit restrictions upon their sovereignty without abrogating it.
For the notion of sovereignty must not be rigid, but flexible and relative, like all political conceptions. Every State, in treaty making,, will limit its power in certain directions for its own sake. States which conclude treaties with each other thereby curtail their absolute authority to some extent. But the rule still stands, for every treaty is a voluntary curb upon the power of each, and all international agreements are prefaced by the clause "Rebus sic stantibus." No State can pledge its future to another. It knows no arbiter, and draws up all its treaties with this implied reservation. This is supported by the axiom that so long as international law exists all treaties lose their force at the very moment when war is declared between the contracting parties; moreover, every sovereign State has the undoubted right to declare war at its pleasure, and is consequently entitled to repudiate its treaties. Upon this constantly recurring alteration of treaties the progress of history depends; every State must take care that its treaties do not survive their effective value, lest another Power should denounce them by a declaration of war; for antiquated treaties must necessarily be denounced and replaced by others more consonant with circum- stances.
It is clear that the international agreements which limit the power of a State are not absolute, but voluntary self-restrictions. Hence, it follows that the establishment of a permanent international Arbitration Court is incompatible with the nature of the State, which could at all events only accept the decision of such a tribunal in cases of second- or third-rate importance. When a nation's existence is at stake there is no outside Power whose impartiality can be trusted. Were we to commit the folly of treating the Alsace-Lorraine problem as an open question, by submitting it to arbitration, who would seriously believe that the award could be impartial? It is, moreover, a point of honour for a State to solve such difficulties for itself. International treaties may indeed become more frequent, but a finally decisive tribunal of the nations is an impossibility. The appeal to arms will be valid until the end of history, and therein lies the sacredness of war.
However flexible the conception of Sovereignty may be we are not to infer from that any self-contradiction, but rather a necessity to establish in what its pith and kernel consists. Legally it lies in the competence to define the limits of its own authority, and politically in the appeal to arms. An unarmed State, incapable of drawing the sword when it sees fit, is subject to one which wields the power of declaring war. To speak of a military suzerainty in time of peace obviously implies a contradictio in adjecto [Contradiction in Terms.]. A defenceless State may still be termed a Kingdom for conventional or courtly reasons, but science, whose first duty is accuracy, must boldly declare that in point of fact such a country no longer takes rank as a State.
This, then, is the only real criterion. The right of arms distinguishes the State from all other forms of corporate life, and those who cannot take up arms for themselves may not be regarded as States, but only as members of a federated constellation nation of States. The difference between the Prussian Monarchy and the other German States is here apparent, namely, that the King of Prussia himself wields the supreme command, and therefore Prussia, unlike the others, has not lost its sovereignty.
The other test of sovereignty is the right to determine independently the limits of its power, and herein lies the difference between a federation of States and a Federal State. In the latter the central power is sovereign and can extend its competence according to its judgment, whereas in the former, every individual State is sovereign. The various subordinate countries of Germany are not genuine States; they must at any moment be prepared to see a right, which they possess at present, withdrawn by virtue of Imperial authority. Since Prussia alone has enough votes on the Federal Council to be in a position to prevent an alteration of the Constitution by its veto, it becomes evident that she cannot be outvoted on such decisive questions. She is therefore, in this second respect also, the only truly sovereign State which remains.
In such matters one must not be guided by historians, but by statesmen. When Bismarck once pointed out to the Emperor William I. that the consent of the Empire would not be forthcoming for a certain political step, the latter exclaimed irritably, "Rubbish! The Empire is after all only an extension of Prussia." This was certainly a crudely military point of view, but it was correct. As history knows of no case in which the conqueror has not strengthened his own organization, so it has come to pass by means of treaties that the might of Prussia has been indirectly extended over the whole Empire; and under these conditions we have prospered, for even the Kings of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and Saxony have not lost but rather increased their effective influence through the creation of the German Empire. They have had to abandon a military power which only existed upon paper, and which 1866 had proved to be illusory, but they have gained a channel, through the formation of the Federal Council, by which they can exercise an influence on the collective will of the Empire at large. This influence is so considerable that the actual power of these rulers is at present greater than formerly, since it depends on realities rather than on titles.
Over and above these two essential factors of the State's sovereignty there belongs to the nature of its independence what Aristotle called [Gk.] i.e. the capacity to be self-sufficing. This involves firstly that it should consist of a large enough number of families to secure the continuance of the race, and secondly, a certain geographical area. A ship an inch long as Aristotle truly observes, is not a ship at all, because it is impossible to row it. Again, the State must possess such material resources as put it in a position to vindicate its theoretic independence by force of arms. Here everything depends upon the form of the community to which the State in question belongs. One cannot reckon its quality by its mileage, it must be judged by its proportionate strength compared with other States. The City State of Athens was not a petty State, but stood in the first rank in the hierarchy of nations of antiquity; the same is true of Sparta, and of Florence and Milan in the Middle Ages. But any political community not in a position to assert its native strength as against any given group of neighbours will always be on the verge of losing its characteristics as a State. This has always been the case. Great changes in the art of war have destroyed numberless States. It is because an army of 20,000 men can only be reckoned today as a weak army corps that the small States of Central Europe cannot maintain themselves in the long run.
There are, indeed, States which do not assert themselves positively by virtue of their own strength, but negatively through the exigencies of the balance of power in Europe. Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium are cases in point. They are sustained by the international situation, a foundation which is, however, extremely solid, and so long as the present grouping of the Powers continues Switzerland may look forward to prolonged existence.
If we apply the test of [Gk.] we perceive that, as Europe is now constituted, the larger States are constantly gaining influence in proportion as our international system assumes a more and more aristocratic complexion. The time is not yet very distant when the adhesion or withdrawal of such States as Piedmont and Savoy could actually decide the fate of a coalition. To-day such a thing would be impossible. Since the Seven Years' War the domination of the five great Powers has been necessarily evolved. The big European questions are decided within this circle. Italy is on the verge of being admitted into it, but neither Belgium, Sweden, nor Switzerland have a voice unless their interests are directly concerned.
The entire development of European polity tends unmistakably to drive the second-rate Powers into the background, and this raises issues of immeasurable gravity for the German nation, in the world outside Europe. Up to the present Germany has always had too small a share of the spoils in the partition of non-European territories among the Powers of Europe, and yet our existence as a State of the first rank is vitally affected by the question whether we can become a power beyond the seas. If not, there remains the appalling prospect of England and Russia dividing the world between them, and in such a case it is hard to say whether the Russian knout or the English money bags would be the worst alternative.
On close examination then, it becomes clear that if the State is power, only that State which has power realizes its own idea, and this accounts for the undeniably ridiculous element which we discern in the existence of a small State. Weakness is not itself ridiculous, except when masquerading as strength. In small States that puling spirit is hatched, which judges the State by the taxes it levies, and does not perceive that if the State may not enclose and repress like an egg-shell, neither can it protect. Such thinkers fail to understand that the moral benefits for which we are indebted to the State are above all price. It is by generating this form of materialism that small States have so deleterious an effect upon their citizens.
Moreover, they are totally lacking in that capacity for justice which characterizes their greater neighbours. Any person who has plenty of relations and is not a perfect fool is soon provided for in a small country, while in a large one, although justice tends to become stereotyped, it is not possible to be so much influenced by personal and local circumstances as in the narrower sphere. French centralization is an alarming example. The incurable nuisance of our examinations is unluckily of Prussian origin, for a country with hundreds of Gymnasien [Roughly, high school] cannot give a free hand to the teachers, and with our uncontrolled freedom of domicile and frequent change of employees it will be hard to find a better method of selection for the mass of Government posts which have to be filled than that afforded by the routine of examinations, which have verily become the curse of Germany. Red tape is an inevitable evil in the administration of big States, but it may be sensibly diminished by the increased autonomy of Provinces and Communes.
Everything considered, therefore, we reach the conclusion that the large State is the nobler type. This is more especially true of its fundamental functions such as wielding the sword in defence of the hearth and of justice. Both are better protected by a large State than a small one. The latter cannot wage war with any prospect of success. There is, however, nothing mechanical in the administration of justice, it must be constantly modified by the daily practice of the Courts, which is nourished by experience of life as well as by the science of law, and it is only when the practical experience of numberless Law Courts is continuously accumulating that the administration of justice can be really effective. There neither is nor ever can be a Swiss jurisprudence; French, German, Italian law exists in Switzerland, but a national code can never be evolved; Swiss jurists continue to develop our German law.
The economic superiority of big countries is patent. A splendid security springs from the mere largeness of their scale. They can overcome economic crises far more easily. Famine, for instance, can hardly attack every part of them at once, and only in them can that truly national pride arise which is a sign of the moral stamina of a people. Their citizens' outlook upon the world will be freer and greater. The command of the sea more especially promotes it. The poet's saying is true indeed that "wide horizons liberate the mind." The time may come when no State will be counted great unless it can boast of territories beyond the seas.
Another essential for the State is a capital city to form a pivot for its culture. No great nation can endure for long without a centre in which its political, intellectual, and material life is concentrated, and its people can feel themselves united. London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Stockholm, Copenhagen are the towns where the political life of the respective countries has culminated. Such capitals are necessary, their sins and their crimes notwithstanding, but it was not until the nineteenth century that we Germans possessed such a city.
Examining closely, we find that culture in general, and in the widest sense of the word, matures more happily in the broader conditions of powerful countries than within the narrow limits of a little State. . . .
We come now to consider the last point which arises out of our definition of the State as the people legally united as an independent entity. . . .
It is a fundamental rule of human nature that the largest portion of the energy of the human race must be consumed in supplying the primary necessities of existence. The chief aim of a savage's life is to make that life secure, and mankind is by nature so frail and needy that the immense majority of men, even on the higher levels of culture, must always and everywhere devote themselves to bread-winning and the material cares of life. To put it simply: the masses must for ever remain the masses. There would be no culture without kitchenmaids.
Obviously education could never thrive if there was nobody to do the rough work. Millions must plough and forge and dig in order that a few thousands may write and paint and study.
It sounds harsh, but it is true for all time, and whining and complaining can never alter it. . . .
It is precisely in the differentiation of classes that the moral wealth of mankind is exhibited. The virtues of wealth stand side by side with those of poverty, with which we neither could nor should dispense, and which by their vigor and sincerity put to shame the jaded victim of over-culture. There is a hearty joy in living which can only flourish under simple conditions of life. Herein we find a remarkable equalization of the apparently cruel classifications of society. Want is a relative conception. It is the task of government to reduce and mitigate distress, but its abolition is neither possible nor desirable. The economy of Nature has here set definite limits upon human endeavour, and on the other hand man's pleasure in life is so overwhelming that a healthy race will increase and spread wherever there is space for them. . . .
From all this a result emerges which closer examination will verify: that there is in fact no actual entity corresponding to the abstract conception of civil society which exists in the brain of the student. Where do we find its concrete embodiment? Nowhere. Any one can see for himself that society, unlike the State, is intangible. We know the State is a unit, and not as a mythical personality. Society, however, has no single will, and we have no duties to fulfil towards it. In all my life I have never once thought of my moral obligations towards society, but I think constantly of my countrymen, whom I seek to honour as much as I can. Therefore, when a savant like Jhering talks of the ethical aim which society is supposed to have set itself, he falls into a logical error. Society is composed of all manner of warring interests, which if left to themselves would soon lead to a bellum omnium contra omnes [War of all against all.], for its natural tendency is towards conflict, and no suggestion of any aspiration after unity is to be found in it. . . .
When we draw our conclusions from all the foregoing we shall not follow Hegel in pronouncing the State to be absolutely the people's life.
In the State he saw the moral idea realized, which is able to accomplish whatever it may desire. Now the State, as we have seen, is not the whole of a nation's life, for its function is only to surround the whole, regulating and protecting it. When the Hegelian Philosophy was at its zenith, a number of gifted men tried to make out that the State, like the Leviathan, should swallow up everything. The modern man will not find this idea easy to accept. No Christian could live for the State alone, because he must cling fast to his destiny in eternity. Out of this arises a youthful error of Richard Rothe's, when, in his work on the history of the Christian Church, he develops the idea that if the State would in the future take over the Church's civilizing duties, the two might amalgamate. This can never be, nor can any one seriously wish it. The State can only work by an outward compulsion: it is only the people as a force; but in saying this we express an endlessly wide and great ideal, for the State is not only the arena for the great primitive forces of human nature, it is also the framework of all national life. In short, a people which is not in a position to create and maintain under the wing of the State an external organization of its own intellectual existence deserves to perish. The Jewish race affords the most tragic example of a richly gifted nation, who were incapable of defending their State, and are now scattered to the ends of the earth. Their life is crippled, for no man can belong to two nations at once. The State, therefore, is not only a high moral good in itself, but is also the assurance for the people's endurance. Only through it can their moral development be perfected, for the living sense of citizenship inspires the community in the same way as a sense of duty inspires the individual. . . .
THE AIM OF THE STATE
Theoretically, therefore, no limit can be set to the functions of a State. It will attempt to dominate the outer life of its members as far as it is able to do so. A more fruitful subject for speculation will be to fix the theoretic minimum for its activity, and decide what functions it must at the least fulfil before it can be given the name of State. When we have set this minimum we shall come to the further question of how far beyond it the State may reasonably extend its action. We then see at once that since its first duty, as we have already said, is the double one of maintaining power without, and law within, its primary obligations must be the care of its Army and its jurisprudence, in order to protect and to restrain the community of its citizens. The fulfilment of these two functions is attained by certain material means; therefore some form of fiscal system must exist, even in the most primitive of States, in order to provide these means.
No State can endure which can no longer fulfil these elementary duties. It is only in abnormal circumstances that we find any exception to this rule, as when an artificial balance of power protects the smaller States which can no longer protect themselves.
The functions of the State in maintaining its own internal administration of justice are manifold. It must firstly, in civil law, place the prescribed limit upon the individual will. It will nevertheless proportionately restrict its own activity in this sphere, since no individual is compelled to exercise his own legal rights. Here the State will issue no direct commands, but merely act as mediator, leaving the carrying out of its decrees to the free will of the contracting parties. . . .
The next essential function of the State is the conduct of war. The long oblivion into which this principle had fallen is a proof of how effeminate the science of government had become in civilian hands. In our century this sentimentality was dissipated by Clausewitz, but a one-sided materialism arose in its place, after the fashion of the Manchester school, seeing in man a biped creature, whose destiny lies in buying cheap and selling dear. It is obvious that this idea is not compatible with war, and it is only since the last war that a sounder theory arose of the State and its military power.
Without war no State could be. All those we know of arose through war, and the protection of their members by armed force remains their primary and essential task. War, therefore, will endure to the end of history, as long as there is multiplicity of States. The laws of human thought and of human nature forbid any alternative, neither is one to be wished for. The blind worshipper of an eternal peace falls into the error of isolating the State, or dreams of one which is universal, which we have already seen to be at variance with reason.
Even as it is impossible to conceive of a tribunal above the State, which we have recognized as sovereign in its very essence, so it is likewise impossible to banish the idea of war from the world. It is a favourite fashion of our time to instance England as particularly ready for peace. But England is perpetually at war; there is hardly an instant in her recent history in which she has not been obliged to be fighting somewhere. The great strides which civilization makes against barbarism and unreason are only made actual by the sword. Between civilized nations also war is the form of litigation by which States make their claims valid. The arguments brought forward in these terrible law suits of the nations compel as no argument in civil suits can ever do. Often as we have tried by theory to convince the small States that Prussia alone can be the leader in Germany, we had to produce the final proof upon the battlefields of Bohemia and the Main.
Moreover, war is a uniting, as well as a dividing element among nations; it does not draw them together in enmity only, for through its means they learn to know and to respect each other's peculiar qualities.
It is important not to look upon war always as a judgment from God. Its consequences are evanescent; but the life of a nation is reckoned by centuries, and the final verdict can only be pronounced after the survey of whole epochs.
Such a State as Prussia might indeed be brought near to destruction by a passing phase of degeneracy; but being by the character of its people more reasonable and more free than the French, it retained the power to call up the moral force within itself, and so to regain its ascendancy. Most undoubtedly war is the one remedy for an ailing nation. Social selfishness and party hatreds must be dumb before the call of the State when its existence is at stake. For- getting himself, the individual must only remember that he is a part of the whole, and realize the unimportance of his own life compared with the common weal.
The grandeur of war lies in the utter annihilation of puny man in the great conception of the State, and it brings out the full magnificence of the sacrifice of fellow-countrymen for one another. In war the chaff is winnowed from the wheat. Those who have lived through 1870 cannot fail to understand Niebuhr's description of his feelings in 1813, when he speaks of how no one who has entered into the joy of being bound by a common tie to all his compatriots, gentle and simple alike, can ever forget how he was uplifted by the love, the friendliness, and the strength of that mutual sentiment.
It is war which fosters the political idealism which the materialist rejects. What a disaster for civilization it would be if mankind blotted its heroes from memory. The heroes of a nation are the figures which rejoice and inspire the spirit of its youth, and the writers whose words ring like trumpet blasts become the idols of our boyhood and our early manhood. He who feels no answering thrill is unworthy to bear arms for his country. To appeal from this judgement to Christianity would be sheer perversity, for does not the Bible distinctly say that the ruler shall rule by the sword, and again that greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friend? To Aryan races, who are before all things courageous, the foolish preaching of everlasting peace has always been vain. They have always been men enough to maintain with the sword what they have attained through the spirit.
Goethe once said that the North Germans were always more civilized than the South Germans. No doubt they were, and a glance at the history of the Princes of Lower Saxony shows that they were for ever either attacking or defending themselves. One-sided as Goethe's verdict is, it contains a core of truth. Our ancient Empire was great under the Saxons; under the Swabian and the Salic Emperors it declined. Heroism, bodily strength, and chivalrous spirit is essential to the character of a noble people.
Such matters must not be examined only by the light of the student's lamp. The historian who moves in the world of the real Will sees at once that the demand for eternal peace is purely reactionary. He sees that all movement and all growth would disappear with war, and that only the exhausted, spiritless, degenerate periods of history have toyed with the idea.
There are then no two opinions about the duty of the State to maintain its own laws and protect its own people. For this purpose every State must have an Exchequer. The machinery of the law, the upkeep of the army, and some system of finance are their first duties. Up to this point no argument need be entertained, for it is of no importance to science whether a truth be accepted quietly, or with wailing and gnashing of teeth. The dispute concerning the alms and business of the State only begins over the question of its ability and vocation to assume other duties towards the human race. No such question was admitted into the political conceptions of classical antiquity, for where the citizen is nothing but a member of the State the idea of its undue interference with his concerns does not arise. It never occurred to Aristotle to inquire whether the State was exceeding its prerogative when it appointed an official to superintend feminine morality. It acted within its rights, and he did not consider whether in so doing it did damage to family life. In the same way it did not strike the Ancients as possible that the State could legislate too much. The words of Tacitus, in pessima republica plurimae leges [The worst state has the most laws], which are so often and so Willingly quoted in this context, simply mean that when the morals of a State are bad it may seek in vain to remedy the evil by a multitude of laws.
The modern theory of individualism, decked with its various titles, stands as the poles asunder from these conceptions of antiquity. From it the doctrine emanates that the State should content itself with protection of life and property, and with wings thus clipped be pompously dubbed a Constitutional State.
This teaching is the legitimate child of the old doctrine of Natural Law. According to it, the State can only exist as a means for the individual's ends. The more ideal the view adopted of human life, the more certain does it seem that the State should content itself with the purely exterior protective functions. . . . But when we probe this theory which has cast its spell over so many distinguished men, we find that it has totally overlooked the continuity of history, and the bond which unites the succeeding generations. The State, as we have seen, is enduring; humanly speaking it is eternal. Its work therefore is to prepare the foundations for the future. If it existed only to protect the life and goods of its citizens it would not dare to go to war, for wars are waged for the sake of honour, and not for protection of property. They cannot therefore be explained by the empty theory which makes the State no more than an Insurance Society. Honour is a moral postulate, not a juridical conception.