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

140 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE GREEKS
reason advises* From the point of view of the reasonable
man, then, the State in to coercive aspect is superfluous.
There is no need to make laws for those who are exempt
from the necessity for regulation; there is no need to dis-
pense justice for those who can determine and follow
what is just for themselves; there is ftb need for the State
to compel those whom reason controls.
Even the eighteenth century recognized that it might
be a long time before man achieved such a condition of
reasonableness as would enable him to dispense with the
State, but, though the unregulated society lay far away in the
future, approximations to it could be made in the present;
could be made, and should be encouraged. The effect of
this line of thought is seen in a somewhat negligent, even
contemptuous attitude to politics. The State in its coercive
aspect, with its apparatus of law and police force to back
the law, is no doubt necessary in man's unregenerate,
that is to say, imperfectly reasonable, condition, but, as
man develops, and as, therefore, he approximates ever
more closely to his proper nature, which is to be a per-
fectly reasonable being, the State will become increasingly
superfluous. Utopia is thus conceived as a society of
perfectly reasonable men who, acting always in accordance
with the dictates of their natures, will have no need of
external restraints to regulate their relations. Godwin
( 1 756-1836), who pushed this attitude to its logical end, was
an anarchist, but throughout the writings of the rationalists
of the eighteenth century, the tendency to treat the good
life for man as something that can be realized independently
of the State in the achievement of that reasonableness
which is natural to human beings, is apparent As a
consequence, ethical questions are diirmsrd independently
of political.
The various considerations at which I have briefly
glanced, die Christian insistence on the salvation of the
individual soul as the true end of man, the resultant
attitude to the State as an artificial growth owning no
,
'