x-collector. Enthusiasm for it, and not only for what can be got out
of it, does not extend much beyond the Fabian Society. Caesarism has the
great advantage of a visible head, as well as of its appeal to very old
and strong thought-habits; and accordingly, in any national crisis,
loyalty to the War-lord is likely to show unexpected strength, and
doctrinaire socialism unexpected weakness.

But devotion to the head of the state in his representative capacity is
a different thing from the old feudal loyalty. It is far more
impersonal; the ruler, whether an individual or a council, is reverenced
as a non-human and non-moral embodiment of the national power, a sort of
Platonic idea of coercive authority. This kind of loyalty may very
easily be carried too far. In reality, we are members of a great many
'social organisms,' each of which has indefeasible claims upon us. Our
family, our circle of acquaintance, our business or profession, our
church, our country, the comity of civilised nations, humanity at large,
are all social organisms; and some of the chief problems of ethics are
concerned with the adjustment of their conflicting claims. To make any
one of these absolute is destructive of morality. But militarism and
socialism deliberately make the state absolute. In internal affairs this
may lead to the ruthless oppression of individuals or whole classes; in
external relations it produces wars waged with 'methods of barbarism.'
The whole idea of the state as an organism, which has been emphasised by
social reformers as a theoretical refutation of selfish individualism,
rests on the abuse of a metaphor. The bond between the dwellers in the
same political area is far less close than that between the organs of a
living body. Every man has a life of his own, and some purely personal
rights; he has, moreover, moral links with other human associations,
outside his own country, and important moral duties towards them. No one
who reflects on the solidarity of interests among capitalists, among
hand-workers, or, in a different way, among scholars and artists, all
over the world, can fail to see that the apotheosis of the state,
whether in the interest of war or of revolution, is an anachronism and
an absurdity.

A very different basis for patriotic sentiment is furnished by the
scientific or pseudo-scientific theories about race, which have become
very popular in our time. When the history of ideas in the 20th century
comes to be