GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

12 INTRODUCTION
end in itself; that the State is nothing apart from the
individuak who compose it; that it has no value except
such as is realized in their lives; and that its raison d'ftor*
is the establishment of those conditions, mental and
spiritual as well as physical, in which individuals can
develop their personalities and achieve such happiness as
belongs to their natures. If, then, we are to speak at all of
"the good of the State" and the expression, harmless in
itself, is one in which the experience of the last twenty
years should have taught us to see danger we should
never do so without reminding ourselves that the State's
good is entirely dependent on, that it is entirely constituted
by, the quality and happiness of the lives of the individuals
who are members of it.
that follow to advocate
It is not my intention in the pages
any particular view of ethics or politics. My concern will
be to expound the views of others, not to air my own. 2 .
It is as well, however, that the reader should know at the
outset what these are in order that he may be in a position
to discount any bias into which they may betray me.
The Author's Own Standpoint. I confess myself,
then, to be a liberal (in the sense in which to be
a liberal does not preclude one from being a socialist) and
a democrat. I believe the individual to be an end, and the
State a means to the fulfilment of that end. It is an un-
satisfactory and often a formidable means, and apt to
display a Frankeftstein-like tendency to destroy its creator,
but it is a necessary one. I am in sympathy, therefore,
with that attitude to the State which regards it as a
necessary nuisance. I believe the object of government to
be the good of the governed and, with certain qualifica-
tions, I believe that that good is to be found in the happiness
1 1 have introduced in the but Chapters of Parts II and IV (Chapters
XII and XIX) a number of conclusions which owe, so far at least as
their mode of is
presentation concerned, something to the author,
But these conclusions are presented only in the form of corollaries
to which the preceding survey of the views of others has seemed to
point.