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

588
POLITICS
ness by the individual of the State, but a consciousness
which, though it is the individual*! consciousness, belongs
to, or rather which actually tr, the consciousness of the
State, being, in fact, a particular expression of the State's
consciousness implanted in the heart of the individual.
Finally, the State is a moral entity and it has, therefore,
a moral end. Mussolini who, as we shall see in the next
chapter, is in common with other Fascist thinkers a
prominent exponent of the idealist theory, thus sums up
the foregoing elements in the idealist conception of the
9 '
State. "The Fastist State, he writes, "is itself conscious,
and has itself a will and a personality thus it may be
9 '
called the 'ethic' State. That man is only what he is
because of his position in society, and that he can only
develop his full personality in society, are conclusions
common to all teleological views of human nature and
of society, which we have several times had occasion
to emphasize in earlier chapters. The distinctive
addition which Hegel makes to these conclusions is that
the elements pfthe individual's nature which are what they
are because of his position in a society, are elements which
are literally derived from that society. They are, as it were,
outposts of society planted in the citadel of the individual
consciousness. "The spirit of a nation (which is a spirit of
1
social righteousness)/
99
dominates from within each person
to be his own very being 99
writes Hegel, "controls and entirely
so that "he feels it
, and "looks upon it as his
absolute final aim ". The English philosopher F. H. Bradley
(1846-1904) expresses the same view by declaring that "what
we call an individual man is what he is because of and by
virtue of community, nod f^>*yiTn^rf m not mere
names, but something real 99
.
Two rather different conceptions are involved in this
account ofthe relation between the State and the individual,
the first chronological and the second logical. The chrono-
logical conception is already sufficiently familiar. It insists
that the mere process of living in a particular social
environment causes the individual to be moulded by his