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

THEORY OF FASCISM 649
Jews, then, were also treated as an excrescence and were
cast out of the body of the State.
The Nazi quarrel with the Roman Catholics and with
the Confessional Church springs from the same source.
It is because the Christian owns an allegiance to a power
which is other than and additional to that of the State;
it is because the Catholic acknowledges the authority of
the Pope, which is not the State's authority, and the strict
Lutheran claims the right to hearken to the voice of his
conscience, which may not be the State's voice, that
Catholics and Lutherans are the objects of persecution.
Principles of Totalitarianism. It is, however, in relation
to learning and scholarship that the claims of the
Totalitarian State make themselves felt with the greatest
insistence. Of the National Socialist attitude to truth I
have already spoken. Truth is not an absolute value
existing independently of the human mind and discerned
by it. Truth is man-made; it is the name men give to that
which furthers their purposes, that is to say, in Totalitarian
States, the purposes of the party in power, which does not
hesitate to invoke the idealist theory of the State to identify
its convenience with the State's will. Now the culture of
Western Europe is based upon the absolutist view of truth.
It was in pursuance of its implications that universities
were founded. These universities had certain principles
in common; freedom of thought, freedom to express ideas,
freedom to discuss the ideas expressed, freedom to teach
truth as the teacher saw it, freedom to search for truth
and to proclaim it when found. University staffs were,
in theory, selected from one point of view and one only,
that of the qualifications of the teacher for the duties
assigned to him. No test based on race, class, religion or
political creed was held to be relevant to his appointment.
Once appointed, he was secure in the tenure of his office,
the only grounds for hi* dismissal bring proved moral
misconduct or neglect of duties. As with the staff, so with
the students; the sole reason for admitting a student to