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

754 ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
ofall the associations to which the individual belongs, the
State is the only one which he does not join by his own
voluntary act. The individual joins ethical and economic
associations by choice. He belongs to them because they
satisfy a need of his nature, or a want of his pocket To
the State he belongs because he happens to have been born
in a certain locality, an event over which he had, we must
presume, no control. The origin of the claim which a
State makes upon its individual members is thus a graphicaltopo-
accident
THE CASE OF THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
IN WAR-TIME. It not infrequently happens that a
man's motive for joining a particular association is his
feeling of the inadequacy of the provision made for his
spiritual or ethical needs by the State. In such a case it is
hard to believe that the State is entitled to assume that, in
time of conflict, the individual should yield unfaltering
allegiance to the organization which has failed to satisfy
his needs, and flout the claims of the particular association
which may be presumed not to have so failed. The case
of the conscientious objector to military service in wartime
affords a good instance of the point at issue. The
conscientious objector says in effect, 'I recognize that I
am a member of a political association called the State,
and that this association from which I derive my social
consciousness has important claims upon me. At the same
time I am a member of another and larger association,
namely, the human race. In certain cases the claims of
the State and the claims of humanity may conflict; such
an occasion has now arisen, and I am bound to consider
to which of the two I owe the greater allegiance. It is not
a foregone conclusion that I should in ail
obey the claims of the Stale, and I must above all retain
the right to decide according to the dictates of my
conscience/
In coercing such a man, the State is exercising a power to
which only the idealist theory ofState entitles it to lay claim.