Morals and the Evolution of Man

by Max Simon Nordau

There is nothing mysterious or supernatural about the historic or even the prehistoric origin of the state; part we can learn from reliable documentary evidence, part we can gather with certainty from obvious facts. From the primitive human family, which more probably consisted of a pair than of a man and several women, there arose the formless horde, a crowd of individuals of all ages, connected by blood; this developed into a tribe in which age, strength, courage and intelligence were appreciated in a certain order, and thereby were produced the beginnings of discipline, co-operation and regularized mutual relations; that is to say, of organization. This embryo of later formations, this sketchy beginning of an economic and political community, evolved more definite and differentiated forms when the wandering huntsmen and shepherds, seeking prolific hunting grounds and pasture lands, and later on arable land too, came upon other groups of men and fought with them for the possession of the desired domain. In the conflict strong and brave men came to the front, and the victor became the natural, and for the most part willingly recognized, leader and master of his companions, while any who opposed him were reduced by force to submit to his authority. The state crystallized around this war-hero, and by all its members its aim was clearly and obviously recognized to be defence and the increase of property outside the state; that is, the warding off of attacks by foreign robbers and acquisitive invasions of neighbouring domains—wars of defence and conquest, but always war; and within the state the maintenance of a certain measure of safety for individuals. This safety, however, had to be purchased dearly by the limitation, often enough the complete surrender, of the right of self-determination, of independence of will and freedom; so dearly, in fact, that the price was far higher than the value of the advantages acquired.

The leader in warfare became the ruler and bequeathed his privileges to his descendants. The state was he himself, the land his property, the people his family in the old sense of the word—that is, his kindred, his servants, his slaves. His comrades in arms who had most distinguished themselves became an aristocracy of the sword, the supporters and tools of his power, though often enough they became his rebellious rivals and overthrew him. Defeated enemies were robbed of all their possessions and slaughtered; later on they were degraded to serfs, a position little better than that of beasts of burden. A regular parasitism developed, by means of which the ruler and his companions in arms exploited the subjugated and productive masses for their own profit.

The acute form of this parasitism was warfare in its chronic form, its prolongation in times of peace, the extortion of contributions and duties, the imposition of taxes and forced labour from the people. The ruler was clever enough to provide himself with a moral right to his exercise of brute force, by inventing a divine origin for his person and power, and making worship of his person an essential tenet of the national religion. The systematic suppression of the masses without rights became the universal practice of the ruler and of the instruments of his power, and this gradually spread to the higher classes who could still play the master to the lower strata, but were of no more account than the vulgar herd in the eyes of the ruler, having to bow their proud heads beneath the same yoke. A very few races followed a different course of development from the primitive horde to an organized state. They remained free members of the community with equal rights, they allowed no hereditary ruler from among themselves to become their superior, and governed themselves as republicans, who nevertheless also waged war without exception, either forced thereto by the attacks of greedy neighbours or lured into doing so by the example of the monarchies within their purview or by lust for booty. In warfare they won slaves and subjects, and changed into oligarchies, most often into despotic states, and before they ultimately declined to the parasitism of a single man and his aids fell victims to a collective parasitism which gave the conquered and subjugated population up to the spoliation of the victors.

Up till modern times the state preserved the character of a private domain belonging to the ruler and his house. Wars were waged in the interests of dynasties, and as late as the eighteenth century the succession in Spain and in certain provinces of Austria was the origin and purpose of various campaigns. The French Revolution first wrought a change in this. Since this great event it has been impossible to plunge any European state into war in order to support the claims to property, more or less legally justified, made by its ruling house. The people have taken the place of princes, and now the principle of nationalities furnishes the reason or excuse for bloody conflicts between states; and this has become a factor in modern politics and history merely because dynasties had built up their realms regardless of the origin and language of the inhabitants of the districts which they had conquered, stolen, bought, or acquired by exchange, by marriage or by inheritance, and were indifferent to the national unity of their subjects as long as they could gain possession of the country and the people.

From the time of its first vague beginnings up till the rise of modern democracy, the state has been nothing but a means of parasitism in the hands of the ruling person or group, and an instrument for the preparation for, and the waging of, war. All the state's tasks, which apparently lie outside the sphere of war, if they are carefully examined, will be found, after all, to aim at efficiency in war, and it has gradually selected these tasks from the simple consideration that their execution increases the guarantees of success in warfare and in government.

The deification of the ruler in Asiatic and Egyptian lands, the unconditional identification of the realm with his person, the uniform enslavement of the whole people, its naïve exploitation for the sole benefit of the sovereign and his assistants are no longer possible in Europe at the present day. The development of the nations to a higher plane of civilization and a clearer consciousness of their own worth forced the state to alter its constitution to a certain extent and to devote itself, at least theoretically, more to the interests of its citizens than the service of its prince. The intellectual constructions of the eighteenth century correspond to no historical reality. The Social Contract, the inception of which J. J. Rousseau described so graphically, was never made. Hutcheson, who had expressed the idea long before the enthusiast of Geneva, conceived it only as the epitome of the principles which the state should embody; according to Hume, the relations of the citizens to each other and to the state are a tacit contract which need not be explicitly formulated, because it originates in human nature; and Fichte even assures us that Rousseau himself did not mean his Social Contract to be taken literally. According to him it was only an idea. But societies must act in pursuance of this idea, and they were founded, if not actually, yet legally upon an unwritten contract. Anyway, the ideas of Hutcheson, Hume and Rousseau have nowadays been assimilated by the general consciousness. The masses believe in the natural, inborn rights of man, some of which he certainly has surrendered in favour of the community; they demand and expect of the state that it should serve their just interests, and they are no longer ready to be made use of by the ruler and a powerful, often very small, minority, for purposes which are foreign to them, which they do not know, and for which they do not care.

Those who juggle with words, who talk dark and mysterious nonsense about the concept of the state, or dogmatize fanatically on the subject, contemptuously call this conception of the nature of the state and the relation of its citizens to it shallow rationalism, and from the heights of their supposed knowledge they look down disdainfully upon arguments which they libellously call the laymen's babble. They are only in part bumptious fools who pretend that uncritical, parrotlike repetition of traditional formulæ is erudition and confused thought is profundity, and who declare the clear-headed men who mock their silly mysticism, their superstitious dread of word phantoms, to be simply incapable of understanding their depth. Partly they are very sly toadies, very cunning sycophants of power, or ruthless egoists, unscrupulous freebooters, who pretend to be enthusiastic and devout apostles of the divinity of the state and demand the most humble submission, adoration and unconditional devotion in order that, as priests in its temple, they may grind their own axes at its altars.

Such are those folk who maintain the double thesis that the state is everything, the individual nothing, the former the sole reality, the latter without any separate existence, and that the state, as mankind's highest form of existence, need recognize nothing as superior to itself, neither right nor law, and may therefore take as sole guide for its actions its own interests and not Morality.

You cannot maintain a single one of these contentions unless you and all men are deprived of reasoning power; they crumble away instantly in the light of Reason. It is not true that the state alone is real and that it is superior to the individual, not only because of the forces at its disposal, the complex of which it represents, but also as an entity, as a thought, a principle. The individual alone in the species, that is, living, feeling, thinking and acting man, is real. The individual created the state out of himself. He can also destroy it. The practical politicians above all people should be of this opinion; as he can do it, he may do it; as he has the power to do it, he has the right to do it. The individualist will not make this a question of law, but will simply assert that, though the individual is the father of the state, yet he has no reasonable grounds for destroying it, so long as it makes no murderous attacks on its creator. The individual did not create the state consciously, intentionally and formally by means of a social contract, but naturally and organically, under pressure of circumstances. It is clearly to his interests to maintain it, to furnish the necessary means for its existence and efficiency, but always on the one condition that the state should really protect and promote the interests of the individual, lighten his burdens in the struggle for existence, and make that prosperity, comfort and happiness possible which he cannot secure unaided in his struggle with the hostile forces of Nature and with rival fellow-men.

But if the state oppresses the individual with burdens and duties which he feels no inner necessity to fulfil, if it confiscates him, body and soul, instead of respecting his freedom and his right to self-determination, then the assumption falls to the ground; the state is no longer an institution which benefits the individual; it is inimical to the individual, hinders him in his struggle for existence, destroys his happiness; and he obeys his primitive instinct for self-preservation if he turns against it, masters it as he would a monster, draws its teeth and claws, and forces it back to the place it was meant to occupy, that of a docile and industrious servant of the individual, not of one individual who aspires to rule the others, but of all individuals who are of the people that make up the state.