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

646 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
elf-assertion and aggression are transcended in the service
ofan ideal and in obedience to a leader, and the individual
is lifted out of the selfish little j>it of vanity and desire
which is the self, and is merged in something which is
greater than the self. As Mussolini puts it, "It is the State
which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a
consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity".
In Germany, confidence in the Leader is said to transform
a heterogeneous mob of individual
geneous and self-assured nation.
units into a homo-
In all these ways the State contributes to the personality
of its members. Although, however, the individual owes
duties to the State, it owes none to the individual. It
is not with its citizens a coequal member of a world
in which both it and they are bound by moral principles
which are independent of either; it is itself the source of
the citizen's morality. For at this point the theory of the
General Will is invoked to prove that, since the State
is a moral entity, whatever the State does is right. To
quote again from Heir Wagner, the Bavarian Minister
of the Interior, "What Hitler decides is right and will
remain eternally right. Whatever is useful to die German
people is right; whatever is harmful is wrong' 9
*
Not only is the State not bound by the morality ofwhich
it is itself die source in its relations with its own citizens;
it is exempt from moral obligations in its dealings with
other States. Since it is sovereign and in its own sphere
omnipotent, there can be no power higher than its power.
Therefore, it can own no superior among other nations,
nor can it admit itself subordinate to any other member
of the family of nations. Its natural tendency is to seek
self-expression in the form of expansion. "For Fascism/'
Mussolini writes, "the growth of Empire, that is to say,
the expansion of the nation, it an essential manifestation
of vitality and its opposite a sign of decadence/' Peace
in the world depends, therefore, on the chance of no other
State or nation being in a position to thwart the State's
ambitions. For if opposition to its policy of self-expression