Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

breathes its spirit. If you call the state an association, you speak the language of individualism, and still more so, if you speak of individual rights which can be asserted against it, and of the individual judgment as ultimate. To call it an association" is contrary, I think, both to usage and to truth. The word is, I presume, employed intentionally as paradoxical and aggressive.

It is really, then, the moral being and moral responsibility of the state which we affirm, and which the main attack desires to undermine, although the method partly consists in setting up against it possibilities of conflict between its discharge of function and other more sporadic goods, not recognising the focus of all these demands in the social consciousness. In this way the method obtains an apparent harmony on moral grounds with its attack directed against the unique moral position of the state. The opposite suggestion, that we do not recognise the moral responsibility of the members of a group for its action, is, as we shall see, a mere misconception, derived from the fact that we observe the moral action of a community not to be capable of being criticised by the method of comparison with that of an individual.

The unique position of the state springs, as I said at starting, from the fact that it is moulded, as no mere association is, by and for the special task of maintaining in a certain territory the external conditions of good life as a whole. Its territorial area adjusts itself to that unity of communal experience which is most favourable to the maintenance of an organised will, so that it tends to cover the largest area within which, for a certain group, the conditions of such an experience exist.

It is an error, I think, resting on a confusion regarding the sphere of the state, to suggest that obedience to it can conflict with the existence of loyalty to associations-I refuse to say other associations-at home or abroad. The state's peculiar function is in the world of external action, and it does not

inquire into the sentiments of men and women further than to establish the bona fide intention which the law includes in the meaning of an act. But whatever loyalties may exist in the mind, the state will undoubtedly, when need arises, of which it through constitutional methods is the sole judge, prohibit and prevent the expression, in external acts, of any loyalty but that to the community which it represents. Absoluteness in this sense is inherent in the state, for the reason which we have noted.*

But even for loyalties which we inwardly cherish, and which appear to us irreconcilable with the concrete communal will, we pay a severe penalty in a felt contradiction which is a constant sore in our mind. It forms a continual demand for reconciliation by adjustment, and so for a new response and an enlarged and not restricted operation of the social consciousness, which if it passes into action will reflect itself in a new and ampler initiative on the part of the state. Every conflict as a matter of course is a stimulus to fresh reaction.

6. So much for the rationale of the so-called absolutism of the state, which is in the main a caricature of its position as sole organiser of rights and as guardian of moral values.

I believe that the principal difficulty which is felt about the view which I am trying to explain arises from its denial that the moral obligations of a state can be deduced from the consideration of those which attach to a private person under what are taken to be analogous circumstances.† This difficulty seems to depend on the crude belief that morality consists in the observance of abstract absolute rules, unmodified by relations and situations, such that you can paint the world of outward actions, as it were, with two colours only, right and wrong, which will stand fast for all moral beings under all

*Pp. 30-31, above. Even the duty of rebellion is not in principle a limit upon this power; for it does not rest on a non-social right, but on a recognition that the state is divided against itself.

+ See Professor A. C. Bradley's lecture, above referred to, pp. 62 ff.

conditions. I do not think it could possibly be felt by any mind which had once grasped the point that duty is a systematic structure, such as to bring home its universal demand in a particular and appropriate form to every moral being according to its conditions, and that the best brief summary of it is "to be equal to the situation."

When this is grasped, I think that the moral criticism of our view is easily seen to rest on mere misunderstanding. We assume ab initio that the state has a mission or a function, a contribution to make to the life of the world such as no other body or person can pretend to. The question is whether comparison with the moral task of a private person can throw light on our judgment of what it does or of what it ought to do.

A word on the case of the private person himself will, perhaps, make the matter plainer. Even his morality is ultimately a very different thing, not from what common sense recognises, but from what popular theory assumes. There is no such thing in ethics as an absolute rule or an absolute obligation, unless it were that of so far as possible realising the best life. In every action the moral agent confronts a conflict of duties, and has in some degree to steer an uncharted course. Every situation is in some degree, however slightly, new; and his moral duty is to be equal to it, to deal with it, to mould it, in accordance with the moral spirit which is in hi, into a contribution to the realisation of the best life, There is perhaps no act that we can think of which, if we do not set it down by definition as an act of the bad will, could not conceivably be a duty. The room for immoral casuistry is infinite, and there is no security but to grasp so far as possible the actual obligations, which in accordance with the ethical spirit acquired from social discipline and applying itself anew in a similar sense, are plainly incumbent upon the particular moral agent. With all the aids of moral convention, of a life organised in extreme detail within a framework of social and legal obligations, of the communal sentiment engrained and

embodied in his habitual will, the private individual has still in principle a new morality constantly to create, though in practice, assuming bona fides, he has in general little difficulty in discerning his duty at the moment. A strictly moral judgment of others is scarcely open to him at all.

Now turn to the community organised as a state. In quiet times, and over a great part of its conduct, its course, like that of the individual, may be considered as plainly marked.* But at any moment some huge new problem may crop up, involving, one might say, a whole philosophy or prophecy of the future history of the world.

Suppose the

British Empire confronted by an opponent or by an international Peace League or Tribunal with some proposed regulation which it (the Empire) judged fatal to sea power.‡ Is it not plain what we mean by saying that there is no organised moral world within which a course of duty under such conditions is prescribed to the state? Even assuming a disinterested tribunal-which at present would be quite impossible-who could determine with authority the effect on the world's future of any such regulation? Of course such a question is not justiciable. Yet when you get beyond justiciable questions you are in the ocean of speculation as to elements of future welfare. As to the really effective type of world-wide authority, I will say more below.

But at present the point is this. In the case supposed, the unit in question has one great certainty. It has the moral world of which so far it has been the guardian, which is the source of the mission or function which its conscience

* I am quite aware of the immense amount of international co-operation, for desirable ends, which goes on in normal times.

+ Conflicting philosophies of history are ultimately, one might say, the root of bitterness between the Germans and ourselves. They sincerely think one course of things best for the world, and we sincerely think another. We are fighting for our faiths.

+

The hypothesis is taken from The War and Democracy, p. 376.

and general will recognise as its own, and of the view of humanity and the world at large which it holds to be the highest. If it believes itself to see clearly that the proposed regulation must destroy or gravely endanger that form of good life and that attitude to humanity with which it has so far identified itself, it will possess in this conviction the only definite element in this moral problem. I do not mean that

it must be so in the case of every innovation; but it very well may be so. In as far as it is so, the consideration of this certainty would probably present itself as an overwhelming ground of action.* There is nothing here analogous to the tissue of obligation within which the individual lives. It is not the mere absence of a sanction that makes the difference; an external sanction cannot affect your own moral obligation. It is partly, no doubt, the absence of an external order on the maintenance of which you can rely; but it is still more, and more intimately, the absence of a recognised moral order such as to guide the conscience itself.

In the case suggested it is proposed to reshape the world; and it may well happen that in dealing with the proposal the unit has no guide but to defend the best thing it knows. This is what we mean by saying that it is the guardian of a whole moral world, but does not itself act within a moral world. Say, if you like, that it is within the society of states. But the life of this society, as a whole, has up to the present no moral tradition, imposing adapted and appropriate obligations on all units, comparable with the social consciousness which constitutes the whole basis and material of the normal individual will. In any case analogous to that just supposed, it is not likely to afford any help whatever. There is no middle term, so to speak, between the unit which has to act and the general obligation of realising what is best—none, that is, except the form of good life with which the unit is already

* See Professor Bradley, loc. cit., comparing the right of a state and of an individual to sacrifice themselves or risk their own suppression.

« AnteriorContinuar »