66 had ceased and that of Prussia had not yet come into being. In a previous chapter I have combated the assertion of David Hume in his essay "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences," viz. that it is impossible for the arts and sciences to arise, at first, among any people, unless that people enjoy the blessings of a free government." I attacked this assertion because the word "Liberty " has nowadays, thanks to Mill, the sense of a facultative power, by virtue of which the individual believes himself authorized to defend his country or not to defend it, to serve society or not to serve it, according to his wish. In this sense liberty is anti-social, abominable, and has nothing to do with culture. But one may give to the word "liberty" another meaning, that which it had among the Greeks-the meaning of citizenship or participation in the government; and in that case David Hume's assertion recovers its full value.' It is around the problem of the governance of countries, and precisely when the governance of countries constitutes a problem, that civilization has been built up. The reason of this historic fact is not historical, but philosophical. The central theme of culture is the governance of peoples. It is the central theme because it is the syncretic. For the good governance of peoples a knowledge of the real factors-economics, military power, and arts and crafts-is as necessary as a knowledge of the ideal factors, justice and truth. In the theme of government the facts group themselves in the ideas, and the ideas discipline themselves in the realities. In Plato's Republic we must see, not merely a Utopia, but also a programme to which the Hellenic cities would certainly have tried to adjust themselves if their independence had not been destroyed, first by Macedonia and then by Rome. Plato's Republic is not a Utopia, but an anticipation. But when the cities of Hellas lose their autonomy, Greek thought strays from reality. Its orators become vagrant jugglers, wandering from city to city, clothing themselves in festive attire to deliver their epideictic speeches of mere show in the marketplaces, and its philosophers decorate the banquets of the stupid senators of Rome. Rome, perhaps, would have been a country creative of culture if, at the beginning of her development, she had been contained by neighbouring countries as strong as herself. Then the struggles between the patricians and the plebeians would have been prolonged indefinitely; and from these struggles a great political literature would have arisen-not to mention the literature which would have arisen among the Etruscans if they had been able to maintain their independence in the face of Rome. But Rome was able to subdue her neighbours, and to make herself so powerful that it became possible to satisfy the ambitions of the plebeians at the expense of the conquered countries. That made the rise of an original culture impossible for Rome. Men and peoples tend naturally to material expansion. It is the bestial, eternal, and indestructible side of human nature. Imperialism is natural to man. It is, as Seillière says, "the original tendency of human to prepare for itself a future of rest and well-being through the rational exercise and increase of its force." Only when this will to power shatters itself against other wills to power which are opposed and antagonistic to it does the human spirit turn on itself and discover the superior values of the true, the beautiful, and the good. In this sense the balance of power, both in home and nature foreign politics, is the condition sine quà non of culture. To this it may be objected that the balance of power leads to rivalry in armaments, that armaments cost money, and that this money must be withdrawn from social reform, education, culture, etc. To that I simply reply: It is true; but when a nation devotes the whole of its strength to the ideal of achieving the hegemony, the other nations have no choice but to sacrifice themselves to stop it. But what I do affirm is that the balance of power is not only an essential condition for culture; it is also essential in order that one day international relations may be based on justice, through the application of the objective principle of law, the Guild or functionarist principle. The balance of power is as necessary for a good internal policy as for a good external policy. And the reason is this: As soon as a social class acquires absolute superiority over the others, it loses all stimulus to produce objective values. It only cares about maintaining its power or spending it in a life of pleasure, while the other social classes confine themselves either to admiring it or to hating it. When a given class predominates over the others in a society, culture is impossible. Modern nations owe the culture they possess to the rivalry of different governing classes-the territorial capitalists, the shareholding classes, the bureaucracy, the politicians, and even the remains of the ecclesiastic hierarchy. The ideal is not a proletarian régime, but to convert the workmen into ruling classes. For every class tends, naturally, to hegemony. But only when the other classes combined are more powerful than the class or classes nearest to hegemony will they be able to oblige the latter to fulfil their functions, and to be content with the power necessary for these functions. A society of nations strong enough to dominate the most imperious, an organization of social classes capable of acting likewise-that is the balance of power. THE PRIMACY OF THINGS THE problem of the primacy of things versus the primacy of men is one of the oldest in human culture. It might even be said that the whole of Western civilization is simply the rotation of the mind round this theme. More than that. What is characteristic of Western civilization is that there have always been in it some men who stood up for the primacy of things. Not that they denied humanity. Only the pessimistic philosophies of the East have tried to deny men, and also things, and to wish for a Nirvana where pain ceases with existence. The partisans of the primacy of things acknowledge the need of men to realize things in this world of ours. The primacy of things means only the doctrine that they form the best criterion for judging men. Protagoras said: Man is the measure of all things, of those which are as they are, and of those which are not as they are not.' The contrary doctrine might be expressed in this other formula: "The things which are, and those which are not but which we wish to be, give us the measure of all men." 66 22 A polemic so old-why has it not been settled already? Simply because there is no Supreme Court the jurisdiction of which is acknowledged by both the contending parties. For the upholders of the primacy of things the Supreme Court is truth. They believe that truth is true in itself, that it is a |