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

THEORY OF FA*4IM 659
puts a premium upon courage and endurance, subordinates
education to 1
military training, and sees in the manufacture
of armaments the primary purpose of industry.
The principle of leadership, which is a distinctive feature
of Nazi philosophy, leads to a division of the community
into two classes, the leaders and the servers; or, to adopt
the Nictzschean classification, the "superiors" and the
mob.
By what method is this classification effected? How,
in other words, are the leaders chosen? There arc two
answers: the first, by reason of the fact that they have a
more dominant will than the led; the second, by reason
of the fact that they know the moral law. Now there is
no way of proving the possession of a more dominant will
except by testing it against that of others, and it is difficult
to see how the test is to be made except by force. So far
as the superiors 1
knowledge of the moral law is concerned,
there are, as I have already pointed out, different interpretations
of the moral law. Many will be found to claim
insight into the Good, and since there is no independent
authority by reference to which the competing claims to
superior moral insight can be adjudicated, since each
must be judge and jury in his own cause, there
seems, 6nce again, to be no way of deciding the issue
between claimants save by appeal to force. Once the
democratic concepts of popular consent, majority rule and
equality before the law are abandoned, once the test of
happiness is rejected and individual freedom required to
subordinate itself to State necessity, there seems to be no
way of determining controversial issues except, in Bertrand
1 AH male Italians from the age* of eight to fifty-five are regarded as
soldiers ; children are not promoted to higher classes in Italian primary
schools, youths do not receive their diplomas from secondary schools,
young men are not, as university students, allowed to take degrees or
diplomas, unless they have shown the required military proficiency.
In Germany, as already noted, the Sixth form has been permanently
abolished in all high schools and the school-leaving age reduced
from nineteen to eighteen. During the year thus gained young
Germans are required to serve in Labour Corps; at twenty they go
into the Army.