The Philosophical Theory of the State

by Bernard Bosanquet

And, further, he must have the feeling for his State, which is connected with the idea of home and fatherland. In a modern nation the atmosphere of the family is not confined to the actual family. The common dwelling-place, history, and tradition, the common language and common literature, give a colour of affection to the every-day citizen-consciousness, which is to the nation what family affection is in the home circle.

{294} Thus, it is not true that either the feeling or the insight which constitute a consciousness of a common good are wanting to the every-day life of an average citizen in a modern State. It may seem full of selfish care, but this is only a narrow view. If we look at the spirit of the whole life we shall see that it is substantially dependent on the recognition of a good, and feels that dependence in concrete form.

And, secondly, to take the paradox in its extreme shape, in which the order of the State appears to arise out of the selfish ambition of the most unscrupulous of men. The contradiction may be stated in the form that the actions of bad men are “over-ruled” for good. But this would mean that the “psychological” critic or historian had first misstated the cause, and then had rectified his mis-statement by a meaningless phrase. The great ideas and causes which were advanced, for example, by the career of Napoleon, owed neither their nature nor their existence to his selfish ambition. They did not, however, owe them to any non-human cause; to any operation of ideas otherwise than in the minds of men. They came into existence through the working of innumerable minds towards objective ends by the inherent logic of social growth, with various degrees of moral insight, and they were promoted by Napoleon’s career in virtue of the common character which united his aims, in so far as they had a reasonable side, with the movement shaped by the ideal forces of the age. There is no reason to doubt, if we do not wilfully narrow our view of the situation, that a conception of good was as much operative in the cause as it is present in {295} the effect—say, in the unity of Italy. We cannot attempt to deal with the problem of the existence of evil, on the ground of ethical and political philosophy; and we are not concerned to deny or to minimise the presence of greed and selfishness as distorting forces in the minds of men, or in the organisation of States. All that we needed to show, was that what makes and maintains [1] States as States is will and not force, the idea of a common good, and not greed or ambition; and that this principle cannot be overthrown by the facts of self-interest in ordinary citizens, or of selfishness in those who mould the destinies of nations.

[1] Aristotle’s saying of the State, that it “comes to be for the sake of life, but is for the sake of good life,” expresses in the first instance an apparent contrast between origin and purpose of States. But its real point is that the purpose is implied in the origin, for the State is natural, and in every “natural” genesis its purpose is implied; and the origin is implied in the purpose, for the State, in the processes which maintain it, “originates,” i.e. renews its material basis, daily, and must do so in order to “be.”

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CHAPTER XI.

INSTITUTIONS CONSIDERED AS ETHICAL IDEAS.

1. We have been guided throughout our argument by the idea that the relation of a given mind to the mind of society [1] is comparable to the relation between our apprehension of a single object and our view of nature as a whole. The former term, in each case, we cannot but suppose to be an individualised case of the latter. The latter seems inevitably to imply a universal principle corresponding to every feature of the former. We can never see through the connections, and the connections of the connections—e.g. of gravitation and of colour—in every part. But our ideal as theorists would be to analyse the physical object into features, every one of which should be a case of a natural law, and the whole taken together a case of the whole system of natural law, which would be our scientific view of the world.

[1] I neglect, for the moment, the difference between the mind of society and mind at its best. The difference is practically considerable, but I shall attempt to make it appear, in the course of the present chapter, to be a difference of progress but not of direction.

In treating of a human mind in its relation to {297} Society and the State, our ideal is comparable to this. We should like to analyse any given mind into features each of which should be an individual case of a universal principle, and the whole of which, taken together, should be a case of the whole system of principles incarnate in the world, and proximately in the social world. Plato, simplifying for the sake of elucidation the City-state, which to our minds was already simple, represented a community, in diagrammatic form, as consisting in a threefold structure of classes, in which were incarnate the three main features which he discriminated in the individual soul—the desires necessary to living, the spirit of action, and the power of seeing things as a whole.