We have seen that the idea of the nation can and does, in virtue of the formation of the sentiment of devotion to it, lead men to choose and decide and act for the sake of the nation; they desire the welfare and the good of the nation as a whole, they value its material prosperity and its reputation in the eyes of other nations; and, in so far as the decisions and actions of a nation proceed from this motive, co-operating with and controlling other motives in the minds of its members, such decision and action are the expressions of true collective volition.
It is truly volition because it conforms to the true type of volition. Individual volition can only be marked off from every impulsive action and every lower form of effort, by the fact that in true volition, among all the impulses or motives that may impel a man to action or decision, the dominant rôle is played by a motive that springs from his self-regarding sentiment. This motive is a desire to achieve a particular end, which, viewed as the achievement of the self, brings him satisfaction, because the thought of himself achieving this end is in harmony with the ideal of the self which he has gradually built up and has learnt to desire to realize under the influence of his social setting. The same is true of national volition.
And it is collective volition in so far as the deliberations by which the decision of the nation has been reached have been effected through those formally and informally organised relations and channels of communication and by means of all the various modes of interaction of persons by which public opinion is formed and in which it is guided and controlled by the living traditions of the nation.
That this is the true nature of national volition may be more clearly realized on considering some instances of national action which could not properly be called the expression of the will of the Nation. A tariff might be adopted because a large number of men desired it, each in order that he himself might get rich more quickly; and, even though a large majority, or even all men, desired it, each for his private end, it would not be the expression of the national will, it would not be due to collective volition; it would be the expression of the will of all. Nor would it be an expression of the national will, even if each believed that, not only he, but also all his fellows would be enriched, and if he desired it for that reason also; that would be an expression of the will of all for the good of all. Only if and in so far as the decision was reached through the influence of those who desired it, because it seemed to them to be for the good of the whole nation, would it be the expression of the will of the nation.
And the difference would be not merely a difference of motive; the difference might be very important in respect both of the deliberative processes by which the decision was reached and also in respect of its ultimate consequences. For the will of all for the good of all would have reference only to the immediate future; whereas the truly national will would be influenced not only by consideration of the good of all existing citizens, but, in an even greater degree, by the thought of the continued welfare of the whole nation, in the remote future.
Again, suppose that, on the occasion of an insult or injury to the nation (I remind the reader of the incident in the North Sea when the Russian fleet fired on our fishing boats), a wave of anger against the offending nation sweeps over the whole country and that this outburst of popular fury plunges the nation into war. That would be collective mental process, but not volition; it would be action on the plane of impulse or desire, unregulated by reflection upon the end proposed in relation to the welfare of the nation and by the motives to action that are stirred by such reflection.
Again, suppose a nation of which every member was patriotic, and suppose that some proposed national action were pondered upon by each man apart in his own chamber, without consultation and discussion with his fellows in public and private. Then, though the decision would be true volition, in so far as it was determined by each man’s desire for the national welfare, it yet would not be collective or national volition; because not reached by collective deliberation.
We have seen that the idea of the nation, present to the minds of the mass of its members, is an essential condition of the nation’s existence in any true sense of the word nation; that the idea alone as an intellectual apprehension cannot exert any large influence; that it determines judgment and action only in virtue of the sentiment which grows up about this object—a sentiment which is transmitted and fostered from generation to generation, just because it renders the nation an object of value. The consideration should be obvious enough; but it has commonly been ignored by philosophers of the intellectualist school. They treat the individual mind as a system of ideas; they ignore the fact that it has a conative side which has its own organisation, partially distinct from, though not independent of, the intellectual side; and consequently they ignore equally the fact that the national mind has its conative organisation.
Imagine a people in whom anti-nationalism (in the form of cosmopolitanism, syndicalism or philosophic anarchism) had spread, until this attitude towards the nation-state as such had become adopted by half its members, while the other half remained patriotic. Then there would be acute conflict and discussion, and the idea of the nation would be vividly present to all minds; but the nature of the sentiment attached to it would be different and opposite in the two halves; one of attachment and devotion in the one half; of dislike, aversion, or at least indifference (i.e. lack of sentiment) in the other half. And the efforts of the one half to maintain the nation as a unit would be antagonised and perhaps rendered nugatory by the indifference or opposition of the other half, who would always seek to break down national boundaries and would refuse co-operation in any national action, and who would league themselves with bodies of similar interests and anti-national tendencies in other countries. Then, even though all might be well-meaning people desiring the good of mankind, the nation would be very greatly weakened and probably would soon cease to exist as such.
The illustration shews the importance of the distinction which Rousseau did not draw in his discussion of the general will—namely, the distinction between the good of all and the good of the whole, i.e. of the nation as such. It might be argued that the distinction is purely verbal; it might be said that, if you secure the good of all, you thereby _ipso facto_ secure the good of the whole, because the whole consists of the sum of existing individuals; and that this is obvious, because, if you take them away, no whole remains. But to argue thus is to ignore the fact on which we have already insisted—namely, that the whole is much more than the sum of the existing units, because it has an indefinitely long future before it and a part to play, through indefinitely long periods of time, as a factor in the general welfare and progress of mankind.
So much greater is the whole than the sum of its existing parts, that it might well seem right to sacrifice the welfare and happiness of one or two or more generations, and even the lives of the majority of the citizens, if that were necessary to the preservation and future welfare of the whole nation as such. This is no merely theoretical distinction, it is one of the highest practical importance, which we may illustrate in two ways.
A whole nation may be confronted with the alternative, may be forced to choose between the good of all and the good of the whole. Such a choice was, it may be said without exaggeration, suddenly presented to the Belgian people, and only less acutely to ourselves and to Italy, by the recent European conflagration; and in each case the good of the whole has been preferred. Is it not probable and obvious that, if each or all of these peoples had consented to the domination of Germany, the material welfare of all their existing citizens might well have been increased, rather than diminished, and that their choice has involved not only the loss of life of large numbers of their citizens and great sufferings for nearly all the others, but also enormous sacrifice of material prosperity, in order that the whole may survive and eventually prosper as a nation working out its national destiny free from external domination? There are, or were, those who say that they would just as soon live under German rule, because they would be governed at least as well and perhaps better than by their own government hitherto; and there is perhaps nothing intrinsically bad or wrong in this attitude; the question of its rightness or wrongness turns wholly on the valuation of nationality. It is easier to appreciate this plea on behalf of another people than our own. One may hear it said even now that, after all, it would have been better for Belgium that she should have entered into the group of Germanic powers in some sort of federal system or Customs union; that, in general, it is ridiculous that the small states should claim sovereign powers and pretend to have their own foreign policy and so forth; that they are struggling against the inevitable, against a universal and necessary tendency for the absorption of the smaller states by the larger.
We may illustrate the difference between regard for the good of all members of the nation and of the nation itself in another way—namely, by reference to socialism, the principle which would abolish inequalities of wealth and opportunity, as far as possible, by abolishing or greatly restricting the rights of private property and capital, especially the right of inheritance. There can, I think, be little doubt that the adoption of socialism in this sense by almost any modern nation would increase the well being and happiness of its members very decidedly on the whole for the present generation and possibly for some generations to come. It is in respect of the continued welfare of the whole and of its perpetuation as an evolving and progressing organism that the effects seem likely to be decidedly bad. The socialists are in the main those who fix their desire and attention on the good of all; hence they are for the most part inclined to set a low value on nationality, even while they demand a vast extension of the functions of the State, conceived as an organised system of administration. Those, on the other hand, who repudiate socialism, not merely because they belong to the class of ‘Haves,’ must seek their justification in the consideration of the probable effects of such a change on the welfare of the nation conceived as an organism whose value far transcends the lives of the present generation.
When, then, we attribute to the idea of the nation or to the national consciousness this all-important creative, constitutive, and conservative function, we must be clear that the idea is not an intellectual conception merely, but implies an enduring emotional conative attitude which is the sentiment of devotion to the nation; and, further, we must remember that the nation means not simply all existing individuals, the mere momentary embodiment of the nation, but something that is far greater, because it includes all the potentialities embodied in the existing persons and organisation.
It is the presence and operation in the national mind of the idea of the nation in the extended sense just indicated that gives to national decisions and actions the character of truly collective volitions; they approach this type more nearly, the more the idea is rich in meaning and adequate or true, and the more widely it is spread, and the more powerful and widely spread is the sentiment which attaches value to the nation and sways men to decision and action for the sake of the whole, determining the issue among all other conflicting motives.
And it is the working of the national spirit and the acceptance of and devotion to the national organisation which render the submission of the minority to the means chosen by the majority a voluntary submission; for it is of the essence of that organisation that, while all accept and will the same most general end, namely the welfare of the whole, the choice of means must be determined by the judgment of the majority, formed and expressed as a collective judgment and opinion by way of all the many channels of reciprocal influence that the national organisation, both formal and informal, provides. In so far as each man holds this attitude, esteeming the nation and accepting loyally its constitution or organisation, the decision determined by even a bare majority vote of parliament becomes the expression of the national will; and the co-operation in carrying it out of those who did not judge the method to be wise, and who therefore voted against it, yet becomes a truly voluntary co-operation, in so far as they accept the established organisation.
The point may be illustrated by the instance of a nation going to war. A large minority may be against war, for reasons which to them may seem to be of the highest kind; it may be that they judge the nation to be morally in the wrong in the matter in dispute, or very questionably in the right, as many Englishmen did during the Boer War; and yet, if, by the accepted organised channels of national deliberation and decision, war has been declared, then, although it was their duty to do what they could to make their opinion prevail before the decision was reached, there is no moral inconsistency in their supporting the war measures with all their strength. It is in fact implied in their loyalty, if they are loyal and patriotic, that they shall yield their individual opinion to the expression of the national will and shall accept the means chosen to the common end. That is the truth implied in the phrase—My country right or wrong. Of course, this phrase may be taken in a reprehensible sense, as meaning that any opportunity of forwarding the immediate interests of one’s country must be taken, regardless of the interests of other communities and of the obligations of common honesty and humanity upon which all human welfare depends.
In the same way, a man might disapprove of a particular tax, say on liquor, or of obligatory military service; and yet he may accept the national will and serve faithfully as a soldier, without inconsistency, and without ceasing to be a free agent truly willing the acts imposed by his position in the whole organisation; just as during the late war many priests served as soldiers in the French army. Or, to take an extreme instance, a man who has broken the law and even incurred the death penalty may be truly said to undergo his punishment of imprisonment or death as a morally free agent, if he is loyal to his country and its institutions, accepting the penalty, while yet believing his action to be right. Such perfect loyalty to the nation is of course rare; and in all actual nations men have progressed towards it in very different degrees. Most existing nations have emerged from preceding despotisms by the repeated widening of the sphere of freedom, as the growth of loyalty in strength and extension rendered such freedom consistent with the survival of the State and its administrative functions.
Thus a people progresses from the status of an organism, in which the parts are subordinated to the whole without choice or free volition on their part, or even against their wills, towards the ideal of a Nation-state, an organic whole which is founded wholly upon voluntary contract between each member and the whole, and in which the distinction between the State and the nation becomes gradually overcome and replaced by identity. For, as national self-consciousness develops and each man conceives more fully and clearly the whole nation and his place and function in it, and grows in loyalty to the nation, he ceases to obey the laws merely because he is constrained by the authority and force of the State. An increasing proportion of citizens obey the law and render due services voluntarily, because they perceive that, in so doing, they are contributing towards the good of the whole which they value highly; in so far as they act in this spirit, the actions and restraints prescribed by law become their voluntary actions and restraints.
Thus the theory that society is founded upon a _Social Contract_, which, if taken as a description of the historical process of genesis, is false, is true, if accepted as the constitutive principle of the ideal State towards which progressive nations are tending.
And, as the organisation of a nation becomes less dependent upon outer authority and upon mere custom and the unreasoning acceptance of tradition, and more and more upon free consent and voluntary contract, the nation does not cease to be an organism; it retains that formal and informal organisation which has developed in large part without the deliberate guidance of the collective will and which is essential to its collective life; the national mind, as it grows in force and extension and understanding of its own organisation, accepts those features which it finds good, and gradually modifies those which appear less good in the light of its increasing self knowledge; and so it tends more and more to become a contractual organism, which, as Fouillée has insisted, is the highest type of society.
It should be noticed that this ideal of the contractual organism synthesises the two great doctrines or theories of society which have generally been regarded as irreconcilable alternatives: the doctrine of society as an organism, and that of society as founded upon reason and free will. They have been treated as opposed and irreconcilable doctrines, because those who regarded society as an organism, taking the standpoint of natural science, have laid stress upon its evolution by biological accidents and by the interaction and conflict of many blind impulses and purely individual volitions, in which collective volition, governed by an ideal of the form to be achieved, had no part. While, on the other hand, the idealist philosophers, describing society or the nation as wholly the work of reason and free will, have been guilty of the intellectualist fallacy of regarding man as a purely rational being; they have ignored the fact that all men, even the most intellectual, are largely swayed and moulded by processes of suggestion, imitation, sympathy, and instinctive impulse, in quite non-rational ways; and they have ignored still more completely the fact that the operation of these non-rational processes continues to be not only of immense influence but also inevitable and necessary to the maintenance of that organic unity of society upon which as a basis the contract-unity is superimposed as a bond of a higher, more rational and more spiritual quality.
The former doctrine logically tends to the paralysis of social effort and to the adoption of extreme individualism, to the doctrine of each man for himself, and of _laissez faire_, doctrines such as those of Herbert Spencer. The other, the idealist theory of the state as being founded and formed by reason, tends equally logically towards extreme State socialism; because its overweening belief in reason leads it to ignore the large and necessary basis of subrational organisation and operation.
Only a synthesis of the two in the doctrine of the contractual organism can reconcile them and give us the ideal of a nation in which the maximum and perfection of organisation shall be combined with the maximum of liberty, because in it each individual will be aware of the whole and his place and functions in it, and will voluntarily accept that place and perform those functions.
The highest, most perfectly organised and effective nation is, then, not that in which the individuals are disposed of, their actions completely controlled, and their wills suppressed by the power of the State. It is, rather, one in which the self-consciousness and initiative and volition of individuals, personality in short, is developed to the highest degree, and in which the minds and wills of the members work harmoniously together under the guidance and pressure of the idea of the nation, rendered in the highest degree explicit and full and accurate.
