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CRITICISM OF IDEALIST THEORY 757
indifference which these associations manifest to the
State, the alternative line of development for human
society which they suggestalternative, that is, to the
realization by existing States of an ever greater degree of
"the tfue nature" of the State and the conflict of claims
upon the allegiance of the individual which the existence
and growth of these associations entails. It disregards
(b) the existing amicable relations between States, and the
extent to which the rigid demarcation between the
boundaries and authorities of different States, entailed by
the isolating tendencies of the theory, is in practice blurred
and cut across.
The considerations indicated above reinforced by the
chaos to which the competing claims of absolute States
has reduced the Western world have produced of recent
years a powerful reaction against the idealist State theory.
Writers have gone so far as to deny the necessity of the
Nation-State, and to predict its extinction. This view is, I
believe, mistaken and reasons for thinking it to be so will
be given in the next chapter. 1
(VI) That Only
Individuals have Personalities and
Exercise Wills
Part ofthe argument developed in Section C. (II) S is based
on a certain assumption. The assumption is the following:
it is assumed that the argument in favour ofthe view that the
State has a being and personality of its own, and that
this being or personality has a will of its own, is a valid
argument. Granted this assumption, I have pointed out
that the same conclusion can be applied to associations
other than the State. These too, if the argument is valid,
must have beings or personalities;
these too must own
wills; and these too, therefore, are entitled to make claims
upon die individual members whose personalities they in
any form, incorporate and transcend. But the notion that
society of human beings, whether State or voluntary associ-
ation, has a being and penonality and exercises a will is
*See Chapter XIX, pp. 774-7*7- Scc pp. 737-739