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

CRITICISM OF IDEALIST THEORY 731
an element in a political complex which is or may become
world-wide, and that it stands in moral relations to other
members of the complex. The fact that this principle is
frequently flouted in practice by constituent members
of the League no more disproves its validity, than the fact
that men frequently act immorally in practice disproves
the validity of the moral imperative.
The idealist theory which insists that the State has no
obligations to the citizens of other States and, except for
the purposes of defence or aggression, no official cognizance
of their existence, fails in all these respects to take account
of obvious facts.
RELATIONS OF THE STATE TO CITIZENS OF
OTHER STATES. Once the identity of the State
with the sum total of human society is repudiated, once the
view that the relations of the State with other States
(when these relations are recognized at all) must be hostile
is disavowed, a number of the conclusions of the idealist
theory, which assume this identity and presuppose this
view, are seen to be vitiated. Even if the claim of the
State to complete omnipotence in respect of its relations
with its own citizens be admitted, it is dear that this claim
can only be sustained on the assumption that the State
represents and transcends in its own will the wills of all
the individuals who compose it. Now there is no suggestion
that the State represents the wills of citizens belonging to
other States: it is not, therefore, omnipotent in respect of
them. Since the claim to omnipotence is used to justify
the further claim to exemption from moral it
obligations,
follows that the exemption does not in any event extend
to the relations between the State and the citizens of other
States. The State, so far as its relationship with the citizens
of other States is concerned, is assuredly not "the guardian
of our whole world" and is "a factor within our organized
moral world ", It follows that the State has no more
with the
justification for non-moral action in its dealings
members of other States, than has a voluntary association