hey were utterly unable to endure so great freedom and
that only a high degree of rigidity could prevent them from destroying
one another. If, however, the words are taken as they are spoken,
they are true under the presupposition that such a nation is entirely
incapable of the natural life and of the impulse toward it. Such a
nation--in case such a one, in which some few of the nobler sort did
not make an exception to the general rule, were possible--would indeed
require no freedom whatever, since this is only for the higher ends
which transcend the State; it requires simply taming and training in
order that the individuals may live peaceably side by side, and that
the whole may be made an efficient means for arbitrary ends which
lie outside its proper sphere. We need not decide whether this may
truthfully be said of any nation whatever; but this much is clear,
that a primitive nation requires freedom, that this freedom is the
pledge of its persistence as a primitive people, and that, as it
continues, it bears, without any danger, an ever ascending degree of
freedom. And this is the first example of the necessity of patriotism
governing the state itself.

It must, then, be patriotism which governs the state in that it sets
for it itself a higher end than the ordinary one of the maintenance of
the internal peace, of the property, of the personal freedom, of the
life, and of the well-being of all. Solely for this higher end, and
with no other intention, the state assembles an armed force. When the
problem of the application of this armed force arises, when it is
a question of hazarding all the aims of the state in the
abstract-property, personal freedom, life, welfare, and the
continuance of the state itself--when, answerable to God alone, they
are called upon to decide without a clear and rational conception of
the sure attainment of the end in view, which in matters of this sort
it is never possible to gain--then only the true primitive life holds
the rudder of the state, and here for the first time enters the true
sovereign right of the government, like God, to imperil the lower
life for the sake of the higher. In the maintenance of the traditional
organization, of the laws, and of civic welfare, there is absolutely
no genuine life and no primitive decision. Circumstances and
situations, legislators who have perhaps long been dead, have created
those things; succeeding ages go trustingly forward in the road they
have