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

THB ID-EALIST THEORY OF THE STATE 599
Such a right relation would be one in which each organ
so performed its functions as to conduce to the well-being
of the whole. If, adapting the analogy, we were to conceive
of the organs of a man's body as becoming self-conscious,
then the establishment of this right relation might be
regarded as a moral obligation which it was their duty
to discharge. Each organ, we might say, would be morally
obliged so to function as to preserve the well-being of
the whole. It does not, however, follow from this notion
that the body has a reciprocal duty to its component parts;
for the parts have no ends apart from it and no excellence
except sifch as is realized in serving it. Their good, in
short, is comprised in its good; consequently to say that
it has obligations to them would be as absurd as to say
that the end has obligations to the means which subserve
it. Similarly with the State and its members. Moral
relations, Hegel points out, imply two parties, and there
can be no other party besides the State which is itself
the sum of all parties. "The State," says Dr. Bosanquet, is
"the guardian of our whole moral world and not a factor
in our organized moral world, " and proceeds to sum up this
line of thought with the rather surprising announcement
that "it is hard to see how the State can commit theft
or murder in the sense in which these are moral offences ".
(5) The Enhancement of the State's Being in War.
In practice the theory culminates in a doctrine of State
absolutism. In theory at all times, and in practice in
war-time, the State may exercise, and lawfully exercise,
complete authority over the lives of its citizens. Nor is
there any ground either in theory or in law for resistance
to decrees which are inspired by the real wills of those
who obey them, even when they obey unwillingly. In an
emergency the State may do as it pleases, and of the
justifying emergency the State is the sole judge. "When
need arises," says Dr. Bosanquet, "of which it, through
constitutional methods, is the sole judge," the State may
call upon its citizens to place their lives at its disposal. It