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

(A)
CRITICISM OF IDEALIST THEORY
That the State is not a Final Form of Human
Organization
The conclusion that the State is a final form of
human organization, a conclusion which is certainly
implied by idealist theory, seems to be falsified by a
as it is believed
plain reading of the evolutionary process
to have taken place upon this planet. This suggests that
the State is simply one particular form of human organization
among many which have been historically evolved,
that it is provisional, and that in all probability it will be
superseded. The course of evolution, as Dr. Langdon Brown
pointed out at a recent meeting of the British Association,
consists in increasing the size, not of the cell or of the
individual, but of the unit of organization. Evolution, in
fact, is a process by which ever more numerous and diverse
units are integrated into ever richer and more comprehensive
wholes. The earliest forms of life are unicellular.
An advance takes place when numbers of unicellular units
unite together to constitute an individual, who is a colony
of cells. At an early stage in the evolution of vertebrate
mammals individual joins with individual to constitute
a family. At an early stage in the evolution ofhuman beings,
family integrates with family to form a larger whole, the
tribe; later tribe joins with tribe to constitute a yet larger
whole, the Nation-State. Thus in the history of England,
the men of Dover are superseded by the men of Kent, the
men of Kent by the men of East Anglia, the men of East
Anglia by the men of Southern England, the men of
Southern England by the men of England, the men of
England by the inhabitants of the British Isles.
Whatever may have been the case with the earlier integrations,
desire for security appears to have been the main
factor in effecting the later ones. It was the motive of
security, for example, which led to the alliance of kihg
and people against the feudal nobility, as a result of which
the Nation-State was established in Europe at the end of the
of an historical accident
Middle Ages. It is something