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

602 POLITICS
deplored, the inference being that we want not less of
the State, but more. The State has furthermore a rckl
will and a real personality of its own, which, from the
very feet that they derive from what is best in the personalitics
and wills of individuals, come to be endowed,
if not with moral, at least with quasi-divine attributes.
Thus the State, by virtue both of its transcendent character
and of the devotion and sacrifice which it imposes upon
its members, enlarges their personalities, and purges them
of petty aims and human selfishness. In Hegel's words,
"it is the ultimate end which has absolute rights against
the individual", and " carries back the individual,
whose tendency it is to become a centre of his own, into
the life of the universal substance".
And to the obvious objection that no State that has
ever existed has exercised any of these functions, the idealist
replies that he is not describing the practice of existing
States, but the attributes of the ideal State; adding that
this is a perfectly justifiable proceeding, since only the
ideal State is really and truly a State, all other States, in
so far as they fall short of the ideal State, being to that
extent not States. Since, however, the perfect State has never
existed, the critic might with some show of justice protest
that the idealist theory is a theory about nothing at all.
A general criticism of the idealist theory and of the
doctrines which derive from it is contained in Chapter
XVIII.
Books.
BARKER, ERNEST. The Political Thought of Plate and Aristotle;
/Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to the
Present Day (Home University Library).
BURKE, EDMUND. Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
* MAINE, SIR HENRY. Ancient Law; Popular Government.
HlRoussEAU, JEAN JACQUES. The Social Contract.
HEGEL. Philosophic da Rcchti.
GREEN, T. H. Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation.
^BRADLEY, F. H. Ethical Studies, especially the chapter entitled
My
Station and its Duties.
MURHEAD, J. H. The Service of the State.
T, B, The Philosophical Theory of the State.