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

728 ETHICS AMD POLITICS: THE MODERN!
that the tendency to larger integration inspired by this
motive has not already proceeded to its logical conclusion
in the construction of a World-State. Rome nearly sueceeded
in paving the way for this further integration, and
die beginnings of other attempts have subsequently been
made. But always hitherto, the factors which make for
perpetuation at the existing level of the unit of integration
actually reached, have proved too strong for the drive of
evolution in the direction of this further integration. For,
whatever the unit which at any particular level of the
evolutionary process happens to have been attained,
whether family, tribe or Nation-State, it becomes the focus
of a number of influential human sentiments. Patriotism
and enthusiasm are evoked on its behalf, self-sacrifice
in its service, pugnacity in its defence, jealousy for its honour.
These sentiments combine to resist its absorption into a
larger unit, and such absorption has been achieved in
the past only at the cost of an appalling price in terms
of human suffering. Nevertheless, it cannot, I think, be
reasonably doubted that a further stage of integration lies
before mankind, and that State must eventually combine
with State to constitute the final unit of integration, which
is World-State. This step will have to be taken sooner or
later by our own civilization, if it is to survive, and it
involve* the surrender of the claims to sovereignty and
absoluteness by the Nation-State.
If I am right in supposing that the State is in no sense
a final form of human association, there would seem to be
no adequate basis for the view of it put forward by the
idealist theory and acted upon by modem dictatorial
OB) That the State ha* Necessary Relations to Other
States and that its Nature cannot be Considered apart
from These*
In Chapter XV 1 I drew attention to the tendency
of writers of the idealist school to treat the State, as if
' See Chapter XV, pp. 584, 585, 600, 601.