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

THE IDEALIST THEORY 'OF THE STATE 589
environment, so that in a perfectly simple and straight-*
forward sense the environment makes him what he is*
This process of moulding begins at birth. A child inherits
certain racial tendencies and family traits. These are
what they are because of the nature of the society in
which the child's ancestors have lived and by which
his family has itself been moulded. It is into this socially
determined family that the child is born. As he grows, he
obtains from the community his language, his education,
his views on religion, on politics and on morals. Moreover,
his relations with the fellow members of his society are
themselves determined by the manners and customs
of the society to which they jointly belong. The stuff of the
individual's being is, therefore, shot through and through
with his relations to his community.
(3) The State's Pervasion of the Individual's Consciousness
There is, secondly, a logical relationship between the
State and its members. I have indicted on an earlier page
the sense in which some wholes are both more than and
prior to their parts. 1 Thus the whole which is the move-
ment of a sonata may be said to precede and to pervade
the details of its working out. Because the pattern in the
composer'* mind is what it is, the movement develops
in the way in which it does, and the pattern as a whole
determines the development. Similarly,
the whole which
is a living organism, that is to say, a body animated by a
mind, shapes the growth and determines the workings of
its various parts and organs. Because a man is ill-tempered,
the corners of his lips will turn down; because he is happy,
his eyes will be bright. Again, the whole which is the
policy erf a government expresses itself in a series of legislative
acts which give effect to the policy. Taken separately,
the acts look like a number of isolated and unrelated meas-
ures, but when the policy which informs them is known,
they are seen as interrelated parts of a whole, the
* See Chapter I, p. 5*~54-