Politics and Ideas – Continued

It is true that to highlight it in a fashion so vindictive only has the effect of making the idea become universally recognized as a “real fact.” In this case only, there is a probability that the action will be directed by the idea and not by “I cannot stand it” and by impotence. Thus, the weak have the need to affirm the reality of the idea. It must be done with ardor and zeal – in the illusion that faith levels mountains – to be able to persuade the strongest to submit, willingly, to the idea as a reality that imposes limits. It is in this sense that we must understand “the politics of ideas” of Stresemann: his pacifism is a declaration of desired impotence. It is founded on the hope – the last – that the other peoples, equally, could be persuaded to consider powerlessness as a desirable state. If power was a right, those who did not have have it or wouldn’t be represented by it, would have large difficulties. His assurance and his self aggrandizing confidence, that he permitted himself to believe in – and that he could make the others believe – that the idea is a determining force of reality. At this moment, the relations are reversed: the right would become power. The purity of the point of view of rights, he declared, gives very strong impulses for its power to break natural and military power, not ennobled by right. The fact that all the following experiences contradict it is without importance. Here is the novelty: that which had yet to occur became an event. One is a “partisan of progress,” of the future. Today, the eternally backward looking can still triumph, tomorrow, their last hour will sound. One is called to “the mission of history” to battle for the victory of the idea against blind power. This vocation fills the heart with pride. Despite all its weakness, being able to feel strongly is stimulating.

Yet, to give to the world the certainty that the politics of ideas is not a mere nicety, but a true application, it is necessary to pay the price. To prove the existence of a new spirit and of a progressiveness dignified by being its imitation, it is necessary, for example, to recognize Versailles, willingly, to voluntarily renounce Alsace, to manifest the will to satisfy all the creditors, to show respect regarding existing treaties, and to appease all the beneficiaries of the German debacle. Recompense would come quickly. Who would not follow with enthusiasm?

In an essay, entitled The Foreign Policy of Germany, Stresemann said on this subject: “Consequently, to Geneva, Germany is not the spokesman of a group; it represents an idea. It means, in this case, to further develop the League of Nations, thanks to very close and positive collaboration, to give that which it had promised its foundation, that the peoples have been waiting for, that is to say: an effective organization to amicably regulate international differences, to consolidate the peace together and to respect international rights.” This German minister, servant of the idea of the League of Nations, is a unique phenomenon. All the other statesmen who came to Geneva with the sole goal to the defend the interests of their people. Bismarck, who knew how much this particularity would profoundly deracinate the German people, anticipated the invention of the foreign policy of Stresemann writing: “The others can expect of us political actions based on compliance to or inspired by a sentiment of universal justice, but refuse to reciprocate with us.”

It is true that Mister von Gerlach, equally the spokesman of an idea, critiqued it by reproaching it, that its politics “had neither head nor tail, lacking principles and objectives.” German politics is not the breath of a strong will to national power, traversing the centuries. It then searches for some compensation in “heads or tails, principles and objectives” that are in ideas.

It is the idea of a desired impotence, the idea of pacifism which penetrated into the depths of the German soul., based on the consideration that the will to power will disappear in the measure that international treaties are concluded. This consideration reveals not only that the Germans no longer had power but that they even lacked the most elementary will to power. This idea is the charm that cradles the man weary and incapable of the happy illusion distinguished by a particular force which, though unusual, is all the same a quality.

Humanism, cosmopolitanism, and its abject variation, internationalism are ideas that express in a sense, maybe not too general, the desire to strip oneself, being that one doesn’t bear to look in the face the unvoiced feeling of constitutional insufficiency. The German is not obsessed by his Germanicism, it is only a sentiment of his heart that manifests sometimes timidly, sometimes with a little more vigor. In his encounter with the foreigner, possessing a robust spring of nationalism ready to impose, the German experiences difficulties affirming himself. He must make an effort on himself in order not to succumb, to not get overthrown by the others, very different, who come from everywhere. He has already suffered such defeats. How it is difficult to be German! Nowhere can we push with clean hands. Germanicism is not an easy thing, it must be forced there. But is it necessary to truly be German? Does it not suffice that one is a man? That would be so simple! To want to only be a man; that sounds well and reminds us that our horizons could be larger, more open. And, in comparison, perseverance in ethnic particularity, does it not have a stuffy and narrow odor? We can strip ourselves of Germanicism because we have never delivered ourselves entirely to it. Since we do not possess it very much, we throw off that which we had. And exactly, this misery is felt as the greatest wealth. We are a veritable “Hans in Luck” who was astonished because he could rid himself even of his grindstone. “Hans in Luck” is in effect a German fairy tale – and not only a fairy tale.

The idea of cosmopolitanism is the translation of humanism in the political world. In the same fashion that humanism “transports” the individual “beyond” his national cadre, cosmopolitanism “removes” from all people the “shackles” of the thirst for power, of the will to affirm themselves and from their perseverance in their “pitiable” limited particularity. The proper nationalism strikes vitality more than the thirst for power, more aggressive to the mobilization of other nations. They do not resist them, they cannot rival them, they feel repulsed, and they report that they lack the vitality and combativeness, meaning that it is not spoiled by nature. How in such conditions, could it justify its need to be recognized? This is done by labeling the unalterable character, insouciant and proudly inflexible, of the will to national and state power as something that should not be, as something suspected of evil. The will to power must be brought to doubt itself, so that its joyous assurance is shaken. It is necessary that it should feel culpable, thus, it will immediately lose the effect that we so fear. We ridicule it as “passe,” like the rest of barbarism. In today’s epoch – the best, we affirm – only a people who has succeeded in smothering it, has value. No longer should a nation search for its proper interest. It must taking into account the needs of all the people, that is to say, the other peoples. The duty of the German statesman no longer has anything to do with German politics. He would poorly comprehend the law of the present, if he did not abstain. Henceforth, he must make a European politics.

How many times have we remarked the German maybe affected the reproach of being nationalistic? In Germany, to be nationalist is considered shameful, as shameful as pocketing silver spoons that belong to others. The German disdains nationalism. He tries to ignore his ethnic anemia, his national blossoming, by avoiding wanting to be what he cannot be. But for the others who do not remember, in a somewhat amiable fashion, its weakness, he uses artifice, very easy to pierce through, which consists of convincing other to accept his scale of values, a scale that suits them so little. However, until now, this trick did not help.

Thus we understand why Germany had the most perfidious princes – Moltke wrote: “The German princes were often corrupt” – that is why they engendered the most ultramontane Catholicism, a bourgeoisie without national dignity, and the most international social democracy. It is a phenomenon altogether German, German in the sense given to us by Nietzsche: “to be a good German means to ‘de-Germanize’.”

Thus, the German doesn’t obey an internal necessity, categorical, and omnipotent that doesn’t tolerate evasion, without pretext, without hesitation. No “force of training” arises in his depths, and leaving no loophole, permitting no reflection, not impressing upon him a direction that would be truly his. The chimeras, the shimmering bait exercise their influence on them. He is dazzled by systems founded on a reasoning “rich in ideas,” concerning, for example, the structure of the state or a foreign policy based upon these principles. Given that his actions do not submit to the imperative force of something fundamental, he falls into the error of believing that he is free to choose the fashion of his meaning. What he takes for “arbitrary freedom” is only in truth an absence of consistency, rocking in the wind. Because destiny, inscribed on him, does not dictate his actions, in a clear and imperative fashion, he dreams and makes castles in the air. As soon as he feels that a danger menaces him, he seeks aid, comfort, and relief in his imaginary systems, because, in his obscure desire, he no longer knows what path he must follow. Only he can consider utopian dreamers, sectarian charlatans, litterateurs, and “logicians” as political counselors.

We cannot hide the desperate character of such a fact in the scaffolding of the spirit. Politics that does not arise from the earth with a strong essence as something natural to it, but that advances painfully by the aid of some points of found benchmarks with finesse, of elaborate plans with intelligence, of stable programs with fitness, such a politics always bears the signs of certain exaltation and exaggeration. Measured on the grand scales of politics, it seems dilettantish. It lacks the equal, weighty, and harmonious character that is natural. And in particular, it is not capable of acquiring this virtue, between all, residing in the sense of measure. Bismarck, sure of his political mastery, proves this virtue. But when the political genius, an exception among the Germans, disappeared, the rule was reestablished: uncertainty and lack of political instinct predominated. That is expressed in a zigzagging politics, in lacking the control of a political orientation, and in an abdication without any dignity. “Insupportable in victory and contemptible in defeat,” here the German seen by Clemenceau, seen with the coldness of the adversary, identifying the heart of the problem with clarity and rigor.

For this reason, it is easy to turn the German people from their way. The forces who invade it from the exterior misguide it. The foreign ideas by which the will to power and life manifest for other peoples – the ideas of ardor, of hot breath, and passionate spirit explain the sole fact that they are enveloped by the vitality of the will to power and life – are dangerous for the German. Since the 17^th century, the French army won victories everywhere, French politics felt so strong as to be able to strike with impunity the German land and people; they went; in this moment, willingly, to the French civilization. The French spirit, the French style, and the French language propagated in Germany, as a pernicious epidemic. And today, regarding Americanism, do not the German people find themselves in a similar state, where they are incapable of resisting? While the whip of American creditors demands a harassing levy, they submit, willingly, to the platitudes, the vacuity, and the banality of American “spirituality.” In 1918, the German people capitulated before “Western ideas” and the Fourteen Points of Wilson. If, at this moment, the enemy had opposed his will to victory and destruction, flooding and manifesting, he might even arm for the battle with extreme despair, sacrificing himself to the last. But since the enemy hides himself behind ideas, he can break the force of resistance of the German people trusting in ideas. “When a great commander wants to attack a city” said Machiavelli, “he must force it to remove the idea that it should defend itself, thus to avoid its fierce resistance. If it is afraid of reprisals, he must promise it pardon, if it is afraid of losing its liberty, he must say that the war is not waged against the entire community, but only against some ambitious people in the city… Although such proceedings are easily penetrated – often by intelligent men – the people can often be lead into error, because they are desirous of an immediate peace, they do not want to see the traps hidden behind grand promises.” The people who have the tendency to carefully treat the objective contents of an idea as a reality, never perceive the pitfalls behind the idea.

However – and this is an extremely serious question – do we have the right to make conclusions about a general propriety? He should not object: we do such a thing – the statesman can thus act – but must we say it? During the centuries, a pall had fallen on Machiavelli’s The Prince. In regard to this work, we understood that the sentiment that he meant was something extremely dangerous, terribly venomous, carefully hiding and only suitable for very strong and audacious spirits. China and India had their Machiavellis and over there they was equally considered as wicked sorcerers. There are a number of cultivated Indians who would never think to speak of Kautilya’s Arthasâstra.

The practical application of these doctrines, that is to say diplomacy, the work of foreign policy, would never inspire the same uneasiness? It was a secret art and even the most impertinent would abstain from showing the object of their pleasantries. But during the war we demanded that secret diplomacy be suppressed. No state, the United States included, accepted this demand. As before, the foreign policy of France, England, and America stayed a monopoly of a closed circle of competent men, tending in secret to the state.

It is the instinct of conservation by great political communities who oppose themselves to “the people” who have free access to these doctrines and these secret arts. There is a strange reversal of the relation: political events are certainly not realizations of ideas, but they can, all the same, unfold smoothly with the condition that we can be absolutely sure that they mean a realization of ideas. This certainty is an indispensable social bond. It places the idea before the plan, it puts it in front. The idea attracts all the views – it orients the masses, in fact homogenizes them. If we can begin to comprehend that the idea is nothing imperative to politics but only one of its means, the feeling of an experienced intrinsic necessity would blur in this regard. It would appear as an arbitrary invention, a simulacrum for a gallery. Politics would not have a “point of view” permitting the organization of the masses, that is to say to model them. And the disorganized masses are devoid of combativeness.

It is in the nature of true political peoples to be deaf to the tempting question of knowing in what measure the objective contents of an idea agrees with political reality. Despite the evident contradiction between the two, they hold, naively, to the idea and submit to, at the same time, without any hesitation, political reality and to the law that is inherent in it. Instinctively, they know that the service of the idea is beneficial to their reality. The satisfaction that they gain when they see their political reality win by the clever service of ideas is, in their eyes, the proof of existence of an accord between reality and the contents of ideas. As they are satisfied, the think the ideas are also. Their satisfaction uniquely provides the evolution they produced, independent of the objective contents of ideas, in political reality. By reason of this edifying misunderstanding – politically very fertile, because it reinforces faith in the idea – the satisfaction is felt, point blank, as the confirmation of the rapprochement between the idea and reality, as if exactly this rapprochement had procured their satisfaction. The strong current of popular essence thirsty for power drowns the questions, doubts, and critiques that could also arise.

The German people are not a political people. While other peoples, insouciant and brimming with energy, rely on their instinct, it suffers, feeling frustrated in its “intellectual integrity” – which, in the political domain, is the sign of a faltering will. It perceives, in all its acuity, the contradictory tensions between the objective significance of an idea and political reality. Its will to life, to power and to creation are not sufficiently released from solid egoism to be able to protect itself against questioning. It does not have this irresistible force permitting it to appropriate even the contradictory idea, in the fashion that is can appear, against its nature – as a form of acceptable expression. The German does not support such a contradiction; he wants to resolve it at any price. When he makes a profession of faith in favor of an idea, he takes it seriously. He does not know to banter with the “sacred.” He feels engaged by the objective content of the idea. Scrupulously and with pedantry he ensures that the requirements of the idea are fulfilled.

Only by pushing globally the requirement of the idea that it is possible to ignore its objective content. Before 1914, the politics of the Reich proceeded in this fashion. The heritage of Bismarck taught that politics must follow the point of view of power. With a heavy enough sincerity, we avow it and the others avow it. If an idea was only a trumpery, we would not be party to frauds who, with the aid of a game of hocus-pocus, mystify the others. The German will to power does not have enough creative wealth, looseness, and flexibility to invent masks to feel comfortable wearing them, mocking the world and conquering it under the masks. In the measure where it fashions ideas, it makes them – as the cosmopolitanism of the opposition – with the sole goal, already mentioned, of hiding its shame and weakness. And in the measure where its own insufficiency oppresses it, it makes the gesture of renunciation. It would like to place in the wrong peoples who have a very strong will to power, and it denigrates, on certain occasions, the will of the others as something reprehensible, which should not exist and is to be surmounted.

Given its character, the German people might wisely abstain from mixing ideas with politics. The politics that takes ideas too seriously is not politics. As Germany would like with such ardor Pan-Europa to mature the most audacious projects of French hegemony; submitting in an unconditional fashion to the idea of the League of Nations, putting it in a straitjacket of inextricable dependencies; to apply the idea of disarmament in a fashion so radical as to become the defenseless victim of the smallest neighbor; to be the slave of pacifism in a manner as exclusive, they find their happiness in being powerless among the powerful. That is not the comportment for politics, but much more the disposition for self-destruction. From the political point of view, it is suicidal dementia. Here, in summary, is German politics, when it wants “the politics of ideas.”

Given the situation, is it not necessary, is it not a simple expression of the German need to live to sow contempt against political ideas, against all the ideas that aspire to an influence on political actions, and against the role of the idea in politics in general. A people who hesitates and must demand “what will be serve?” making an appeal in every sense, designing suspicions and smelling garbage, as soon as an idea imposes itself in the affairs of politics, that is the German people. They must comprehend that only the will to power and life shows the way and that the idea only serves this will, sometimes as a luminous reflection that attracts, sometimes as a spark that enlightens, sometimes as a mask of trickery, sometimes as a symbol that gives confidence, sometimes as an encouraging war cry, sometimes as a flag, a rallying sign given to allies – but almost always as an encouragement to strength in itself and as a pledge of good conscience.

Politics and Ideas – Continued

The will to power of France is a very particular vivacity. It throws sparks, blazes, but it does not lose itself in smoke: constantly, it renews itself from its proper resources. It shines in its mobility and irritability. It sparkles, naive and carefree. It is in its nature to want to be beautiful and fascinating. It wants to dazzle, enchant, and provoke enthusiasm. The overhead veil which covers it, the sparkling charm that is its set, all of which is offered by the idea. It knows many ideas, useful and well advised, maybe becoming. It serves as the plume of a peacock, as a perfume, as flattering lighting. It is a coquette, it decorates itself. It knows the art of charming with the idea, of seduction, of how to “turn heads.” However, this impassioned breath, this persuasive vitality, permitting the idea to to convince, does not emanate from itself. The artifices of the idea are nothing other than the manifestations of the overflowing energies of the will to power and to life of France. It is that which radiates across the idea which is only a transparency. However, we have ignored this fact; we do not know that the idea serves to hide the will to power, it is confounded with it, and it is that which gives it its enormous effect. The idea gives flexibility to the will, while the will fills the idea with force and ardor. This fusion is so complete that in effect, certain political ideas are considered as typically French. We can immediately count them, when we taste attentively the flavor of the ideas “liberty, fraternity, equality” and “Pan-Europa.” There were they have installed themselves, they in no case reinforce their purely spiritual content, they reinforce the political domination exercised by the French nation. In his work Die Westliche Grenzfrage, Moltke said with acidity of the French: “Four times they have changed their principles, and with each change, we have lost territory.” The receptivity towards the ideas of the Revolution, outside of France, was only a fashion of expressing that we were ready to submit to the iron hand of Napoleon – the same as today with the profession of faith in favor of the idea of Pan-Europa, it is the manifest avowal of approving French hegemony in Europe, and even supporting it.

The English will to life and power is without parallel, given its firmness and brutality with which it argues. Yet, it is not like the French will, easily inflamed and bubbly, nervous and mobile. The cold determination, the crushing violence with which it imposes itself, are like the pressure of a glacier that advances with disturbing slowness, but can never stop. It is too heavy to be capable of maintaining a charming, genial, and elegant relation with the idea as the French will to power can do. This agile displacement that predisposes the French will to power, by its structure, to a very large intimacy with the idea, fails in the English manner. The British will to power wants to win terrain. It is slow and measured in its preparations. But ineluctably, as its destiny, it seizes these things, when the moment comes. It is like a force of nature, and it feels itself as such. It has almost no need to soothe its conscience , to present a superior justification, to serve as an adornment or a pleasant disguise. “The wisdom, the order, and the force, do they not announce you the Lord, the Lord of the Earth?” When we have a force of nature who has nothing but success, is there not something divine behind it? Is it not simply the revelation of the divine will? God has decided against the Dutch, said Cromwell, once the envoy to the Netherlands. He only has to rally to the power of the British Republic, to extend with it the Kingdom of God, and to liberate the people from their tyrant.

Here the problem and the distinction are nearly erased. The power which we identify and we put put without ceasing to the test is experienced in a fashion so intense that we finally believe it to be an instrument of God. It is magnificent and that suffices. Who, in these conditions, could then have scruples in regards to the requirements of moral and political ideas? When one is elected by God, to be in accord with all these ideas demanding respect, is to be near to Him, even if at first it is not evident. With a little patience, the truth will emerge. Thus, we remain convinced to serve the ideas, even if an aspect of the actions disavows the meaning of the idea. This contradiction does not inspire concern, it is only superficial – who could doubt? One is always just when one is the organ of God. Do we understand why the English with their primitive piety cannot simply tolerate when the existence of God is put into question? Faith in God is an essential component of English politics. This faith is the tribute that permits them to satisfy all their ideas. In these conditions, irreligion must not only be decried as shocking, but also a treason towards the nation and the country.

The American is Anglo-Saxon. The American point of view resembles the English point of view. But all that the English mentality presents under a reserved, constructed, cultivated, and disciplined form is, in the American translation, rendered coarse, deformed to become unwieldy, crude, and excessive. The American equally believes himself chosen and elected by God. This sublime sentiment does not suffice yet to decide, in its quality of acting, to respect its forms and keep face. While the French put an artist’s care into creating the mystification that consists of making believe in the accord between the idea and the will to power, while the English try, after all sincerely, this contradiction which exists, the American doesn’t even experience the need to orient the manifestations of its will to power – would only in appearance – according to ideas that “we” pretend to respect, because everyone does it. The American ignites for the idea. The eruption of enthusiasm is the sacrifices he makes for it. He is not entitled to demand more and to influence by its daily behavior? America prepares treaties condemning war and simultaneously, it deprives Nicaragua of its independence and prepares to violate Mexico. It wants to exploit a defenseless people by circulating throughout the world the Fourteen Points testifying as a grand nobility. With a manner so much more superficial and commercial than in the case of the English, it considers itself as released from ideas through the exercises of holy devotion. He gives to God that which is God’s by sanctifying Sunday, and God cannot require more of him. Certainly, as such an honest trader, he attempts to execute the contract. He would consider himself as a crook towards God, if he would permit that impiety in the domain of the Lord – eventually by the service of Darwinism. His tribunals protecting God from the conclusions of the doctrine of Darwin. The idea intoxicates him, but he totally excludes that one day it can have a real influence on him.

What a difference in relation to the German! This one is the “idealist” among the peoples. Exalted, he raises his face to the “idea,” his eyes fix there, his mouth open to the celestial harmony. Dazzled by this light, it usually happens that he loses contact with reality. In the idea, he recognizes the motive force of history. He truly takes politics for a “realization of ideas,” and thinks it must be done in the fashion that all will to power is hemmed in.

The receptivity of the Germans to the artifices of the idea has facilitated the political intentions of Wilson: to make the German people doubt themselves and the soundness of their proper cause.

However, the question poses itself, of knowing if the German people truly embody a more evolved species because it is more accessible to the charm of the idea, that it submits itself more easily when ideas enter into play and that it supposes, with complacency, that it is really and exclusively the sense and the content of ideas. Is a people that is closer to ideas, more “ideal”, that is to say, in the current sense: more “perfect”, because events invoke idealized motifs that, for them, already prove the force of ideas? If a people abhors, as a sin against the Holy Spirit, doubting a profession of faith in favor of an idea, if it sees a criminal enterprise in the fact assembled around an idea, without that being the unique reason of the assembly, if it is inclined, when faced with the purity and sublimity of an idea, to genuflect, to venerate it, and to be at its service, does that testify to the greatest distinction, the most elevated rank?

Even if that seems to be the case, in truth, all of that does not speak in favor of a greater nobility and a greater existential value. The idea seduces and occupies the field of view, because we have a short view and do not see in to the heart of things, because the feeling of reality is not very acute and we do not perceive – or perceive in an incomplete fashion – that which is. The profound respect the Germans have for the idea is the symptom of a weakening disposition of the instinct to power and a diminution of the will to life, placed in their character. To be “taken” by the ideas means that we lack solidity.

The will to life and power of the Germans is very reserved, more inhibited than all the other peoples. It doesn’t have this ardor that permits them to leap over obstacles. It doesn’t know to simply draw from the wealth of its existence the courage that would authorize it for all that it would want to undertake. It doesn’t have a direction, towards which it feels itself pushed, irresistibly, with an impetuous and unswerving fierceness, not having direction, is that not exactly its weakness? The history of Germany is marked by this lack of vitality and of will to power. The particularity, this isolation, this sentiment of well being in the little states, expresses that a people is running out of breath. The national spirit does not attract and does not recover its sources. The plastic, organizational, force, that nourishes itself and eliminates that that which is harmful to it, that heals the wounds and constructs all, this force is not creative enough for it to be capable of engendering something that is living and solid, formed from the center, coherent, something that would be an accomplishment given to the world. Thus neither a strong state, nor a true sentiment of national value can develop. A profound dissatisfaction with itself and its proper imperfection would gnaw without cease the depths of the conscience. It would manifest itself in the exaggerated estimation of all that comes from “elsewhere”, and in this attitude of wanting to be “righteous,” which, after all, is nothing but the expression of a feeling of hidden inferiority. We could try to take a distance from the Germanism we have suffered because we are entirely unsatisfied. In certain epochs, the German, encountering a foreigner, hid his nationality. Certain branches of the people hoped to become nobler and separate from the mother country. Thus were born the Netherlands and Switzerland. In his work Die Westliche Grenzfrage, Moltke said: “In this fashion all feeling for the German nationality died in the Swiss, who, after all, are Germans.” In the same fashion Alsace become foreign to the Reich. We do not bear Germanism in our heart, such a secret flame. For this reason, there is no “Germany Irredenta.” That they are placed under German, French, Belgian, Czech, Italian, or Polish sovereignty is of little import to the Germans.

To face this weakness in the vital force of the people, Bismarck believed it necessary to maintain the German dynasties. Thus he said in Gedanken und Erinnerungen: “If the dynasties were suddenly abolished, it would improbable that a national feeling could reunite all the Germans in the functions of European politics and under the plan of international rights. This seems excluded, even under the form of confederated Hanseatic cities or burgs of the Reich. The Germans would become the prey of better structured peoples, if they lost this bond that resides in the conscience of the nobility, the common feeling of all the princes. In Germany, the ethnic character marked the most by history is certainly the Prussian character. Yet, no one can respond with certitude to the question of knowing if the state union of Prussia could maintain itself without the Hohenzollern dynasty and their right holders.” The doubts that Bismarck nursed on the subject of national feeling, are not separated from the existence of the actual German Republic. The aggravation of internal antagonism of parties and social classes, the impetuous spirits of particularism that do not cease to manifest the forces of disintegration, which we do not know if, supported by “the functions of European politics”, they prepare the ruin – gradual or sudden – of the Reich.

The weakness of the national will to life and power, the lack of “popular vitality” is a fundamental fact in the German existence. It manifests itself everywhere: in the general attitude, in the goal that we are fixed, in the choice of means, in the force of the blows we suffer, in the determination to assert itself. “Necessity is not the law,” said Bethmann Hollweg, when he formally recognized “the injustice committed towards Belgium” that we must “repair.” He stood before the Reichstag as someone caught in the act and had nothing of this insouciance proper to a man who feels the measure of things.

Finally we only have the courage of which we are capable, when we have the force. We feel little confidence and we have bad conscience when we fix upon a goal above our means. But, at the same time, we suffer from the need to accommodate this state of things, and we try to tranquilize ourselves by making a necessity of virtue. We seem to impose on ourselves limits on principle and for a noble idea, and we have committed the strongest wrong, using force, blaming ourselves, accusing ourselves of an infraction of sacred principles.

Politics and Ideas – Continued

The order of feudal society regularly imposed fetters on the productive forces which, beginning in the 16^th century, began to develop on a grand scale. The nascent urban bourgeoisie felt themselves embarrassed and oppressed in their work. The traditional authority of public powers was hostile to their vital interests. Undermining and reversing this authority became the mission of bourgeois society. It took centuries to accomplish this task. The work of decomposition and demolition which was the golden hunt for the bourgeoisie, should open unlimited spaces, lured by their purely destructive character, since it would unfold in the nimbus of the “idea of liberty.” Spontaneously, liberty was considered as one of the greatest values of humanity. It presages that state in which man expects that it will suppress all that crushes and afflicts him, all that overwhelms him. The bourgeoisie would want to remove the corporations and diverse guilds. They were condemned because they believed that with the abolition of these institutions, limiting the thirst for profit, the entirety of humanity would be liberated from all internal and external pressures. The movement of bourgeois emancipation was considered purely and simply as “the war for the liberation of all humanity.” Thus, they found allies everywhere where men held the hope and ardent desire to find the roots of their misery and constraint. But when the victory of the bourgeoisie, under the flag of liberty, was obtained, what did they discover? They learned that their goal had procured for a thin layer of the population the right to exploit, shamelessly and unceremoniously, millions of others. Certainly, the idea of liberty was expressed, in a pertinent fashion, the general direction of events, the progressive destruction of bonds, but finally it no longer was able to keep its explosive force: that is to say a certain change towards a better future and a more elevated form of human existence.

In a similar manner, one can “unmask” all political ideas. Thus, we see that the last idea of “freedom of the seas” hid in itself the Anglo-Saxon ambition to dominate the oceans, the last idea of “Pan-Europa” concealed the hegemonic will of France towards Europe. The pacifist idea is the sparkling veil which clothes the sated property instincts – whether those be English or Dutch – fearing for their colonies. But in certain cases, poor and weak people can equally turn towards this idea. It must serve as a narcotic that they strongly administer. It should coax the strong into giving respite to the weak, then they can discretely, become stronger. In no case, did the Hague Peace Conferences, suggested by the Tsar, give birth to true pacifist sentiments. Muraviev, the Russian statesman, had pressed for these conferences. After, the Russo-Japanese war, they should procure a time of tranquility in Russia, which manifested so energetically its love of peace. They thought to utilize this calm to put in order Russian finances and reorganize and reinforce the Russian army. The idea of the right of people to rule themselves was a weapon of Czech, Polish, and Yugoslav nationalism. The usage by French politics of the idea of security was a veritable masterwork of extravagant audacity. In a frivolous fashion and by playing everything, they dared the worst of those who could demand good faith from men. Shamelessly, they advanced themselves over the last limit, where impudence was not only in itself a revolting provocation but where they must inevitably be resented as such. French politics asserted the idea of security to make the entire world understand that France is never more peaceful than when it constructs fortresses, uses tanks, makes military aircraft, and stockpiles toxic gas bombs. The idea of progress took, during the war, the form of a recommendation that was advantageous, useful, and profitable for the enemies of Germany. The idealized contents of the Fourteen Points of Wilson should incite the German people to renounce their cause and to deliver all their confidence to the generosity and nobility of heart of their enemies.

It is the same in cases where the root of an idea is the direct negation of the essence and tendencies of reality with which it is put into relation. The idea is not the reflection or model anticipating the perfection of existence, but on the contrary, its antipodes. It attracts the glance and general attention. Cannot reality discretely evolve in an opposite sense? By imposing itself as a credible interpretation of reality, it is in truth the denial of reality. It does not reveal the base, it abuses. Since it does not even find confirmation in reality and that it constantly courts the danger of being unveiled and refuted as trickery, it must be argued with a screaming rudeness. The appeal that is addressed to humanity must be especially pretentious that must be affirmed desperately against the uncontrollable impression of reality, arising from the weight of things. It especially cries strongly that the task that it lowers itself to accomplish is dirty. Its impertinence becomes insupportable in the measure in which it wants to distort judgment.

Disarmament is part of a type of idea which serves as a screen that dissimulates the evolution of reality. The evolution must do without the visual field to which man pays attention.

The superhuman efforts, that the European peoples had made during the war, their need to remain soldiers during the four years, provoked a reversal of public opinion. The people were tired of bearing arms, of being in uniform. They would become pacifists because of militarist force feeding. They were “pacifists of fatigue.” In the victorious peoples vibrated the memory of the goal that they once had enthusiasm for: crush Germany to finish definitively with the war. Germany was vanquished – they could and should uproot its warmongering. The leaders made a profession of faith in favor of disarmament, it was a promise in this sense. The people believed in this promise, taking it at face value, and abstained from verifying if it held. However, the governments held in perpetuity the new distribution of power. Under the pretext of disarmament, the would proceed with adaptations, modifications, restructurings, and perfecting of their armies. To express it with the words of Machiavelli: they would speak of peace and prepare for war.

Political ideas are always founded on the currents of the epoch: the ardent desires of peoples, the wish to change, the hostility in regards to the authorities, the nascent sentiments of national pride, the self confidence of peoples, the forms of influence of a power in place, that, as for example, “Americanism,” make felt their vitality, their robustness, and their endurance. Sometimes, the idea reflects the characteristics of the phenomenon of the epoch. It is the formula that allows to take the conscience and which, thereby, becomes an effective propaganda. In another case, it is an ideal moving away from the forms of daily life. Politics then seizes the constraint, to the requirement which emanates by pretending to take dispositions to appropriate the same ideal. Sometimes, it is a grandiose protest against the “status quo.” But behind this pathos, it only conceals a malignant egoism whose hour comes when the traditional state and its right to exist are put in question under the weight of protest. But in no case, it is not in the nature of politics to realize this political ideas, regardless of the type to which they belong. Also, even with moral and religious ideas, they are only means of politics. It is only because they turn directly around these phenomena, objects, modifications, and structures, ascensions and declines, which together with their interactions constitute the contents of politics, which are “political” ideas. But they are not it, because politics aspires to consciously transport these ideas from the sphere of their spiritual existence into a living reality.

The problem posed by the relation between politics and ideas, in the sense of a symbolic concept, is more simple and transparent. This idea reunites the characteristics with facts based on experience. “The idea of the German state” gathers the essential elements of the German state; given historically, living through the centuries. “The idea of the art of war” is evidently shown as all that is common in war from the past to the present, all that is regular and all that follows the same laws, a bit like what Clausewitz magisterially did in his remarkable book Vom Krieg (“On War)”. Even if there are certain idealistic elements, various idealized components are mixed into the abstract notion, which was created from experience, however the fact remains that it better serves the knowledge of political facts. Sometimes, politics grabs these ideas to clarify itself, to arrive at a frank comprehension of its ways and methods. Certainly, such introspection reveals that one is in accord with the nature of things, given a certain force and a certain courage: taking into account its convictions with more firmness and assurance.

We have seen that the idea is not the motor of the political process. One time, it will be signboard and a war cry, another time, a pretext and ruse, but never is it the primal force that causes and produces true effects. But the political force, coming directly from events, what is it in reality?

It is the will to existence and the power of the state through which the will of the people manifests itself. This will to affirm and to extend its power is something elementary. It is a fundamental fact which bears its right and law. To win, to be worthy, is the sole commandment they obey. Certainly, this commandment does not come from the outside. It is the formula that summarizes the need and the force which, per se, characterizes nature. It is the same that Machiavelli means, when he writes: “When it is for the nation, to be or not to be, he must not reflect if this or that is just or unjust, humane or cruel, laudable or shameful. But not unceremoniously, it must take measures to save its life and preserve its liberty.” The English then formulated it more concisely: “My country, right or wrong.” Here it is to make the will to existence of the state which orders and imposes norms, which is an absolute and sovereign fashion, uniquely by the function of itself, and which, imperiously, brings back all to itself.

Certainly, there is a variability in the force of this will to life. Sometimes, it is fiery and irascible, suddenly inflamed, all devouring, such an immense fire; sometimes it is tenacious, unswerving, flowing in large waves, such a powerful stream; and in another case, it lacks assurance, is weak, without endurance, as if it drew from meager sources. The more this will to life unfolds, strongly, untamed, with a tranquil assurance, this named “political instinct” is more developed and infallible. It is a wisdom of full equilibrium, coming from unfathomable depth, a wisdom that never tricks itself and which, in all circumstances, finds that which needs to be done. It is equally that foolproof tact that always says what is opportune. The sense of political reality: it is seen as incorruptible, the sure hand that seizes without hesitating, the feeling that can never be tricked by that which is useful, this developed flair for that which is necessary, and at the same time, possible. Its fierce “sanguine character,” its proud certainty, resting on solid bases, its sustained attention., its positivism, and its elevated degree of interior concentration which inspires confidence; all of those are only phenomena, manifestations of health and of force of the national and state will. Its health and boundless force gives a particular tint to the relation between ideas and politics, whose basic elements are seen everywhere. It is this particular tint that distinguishes and differentiates between peoples. The French, the Americans, the English, the Germans live this relation differently, with a variable and divergent manner.

Politics and Ideas – Continued

Calvinism, which would imprint its image on an entire epoch, is a typical example. It shows how religion is put into the service of the profane world and how it is possible to even sanctify exterior and material success with the aid of the specific and transcendent contents of religion. Success is a sign of the blessing of God upon the work. Under this angle, politics has an easy game to justify itself equally before all the metaphysical needs of man. Thus by obtaining results it realizes the sense of the world and shows that divine providence has dictated it. Its success confirms that. Who, in these circumstances, can reproach the means – even the most daring and misleading – which serve to assure his success?

In the present case, politics is undeniably considered from the point of religion. However, one feels that this point of view does not correspond to the nature of politics. It enlightens political evil and at the same time is in contradiction with its proper religious character. The discord between the political object and religious enlightenment is evident.

Yet, there are cases where this discord practically disappears. It disappears when a grand statesman is at work. We have already noted that his relation to morality is particular and exceptional. By acting with the function of responsibility for his people, he reduces to silence the requirements of ethics and annuls, on certain occasions, the scales of moral values. His relation to the religious idea is sometimes incomparably very positive. The great statesmen are always considered as instruments of destiny. They feel that unsearchable forces operate in them. They believe that mysterious powers push them towards unknown destinations. They see themselves as blind creatures of a superior will dominating all things here below. Their sentiment of dependence and of “being conducted” is a veritable religious phenomenon. Political action – o how shocking in particular cases – unfolds itself in a religious atmosphere. With an unswerving confidence, the statesman “knows” that he is the “servitor of God.” He ignores the doubts and lives with the certainty of being in accord with God. The religiosity of Bismarck was of that type of naive and childlike piety. The ensemble of acts is presented as a mission given by God. Insufficiency, the doubting character must be considered in the same manner as the imperfection of that world that God himself created.

But equally in this case, politics in not the realization of the religious idea whose reign is not of this world. Politics always follows its proper law. In the present case, the sole participation consists of the fact that politics evolves in an atmosphere and imagination of religious ideas. But despite all, politics and religion remain foreign to one another and objectively incompatible. There divergence is irremediable, even if in the conscience of the statesman it appears to be suppressed. The personal conviction made by the master does not suffice to put it there.

He must very well admit it: characters so different and incompatible as there are between them, have shown, from all evidence, that religious ideas are not political ideas. Between religion and the tendencies of political reality, there are no elective affinities. It is a fact to which one must resign himself. In these conditions, one comprehends the weakness of this type of idea before political events. But that is not to say that the question of knowing to what measure ideas influence politics is resolved. Are there not, in a particular and very precise sense, political ideas, which are ideas that, according to their origins, their orientation, and their contents, live and evolve in the world of politics?

These ideas, could they not be the forces that guide, the examples that inflame, the models of political reality? History shows us the explosive and elementary force that is inherent in these ideas, they represent the first cause and veritable motor of evolution. We know these beacons: liberty and equality, progress and civilization, international peace and rapprochement between peoples, the right of self-determination and the sovereignty of the people, the war to end war, security and natural borders. It means that ideas announce of the new currents of the epoch.

But one can pose the question of knowing whether ideas create this current or if they only reflect it, if they are only images anticipating the objectives of the current.

Are they primitive forces producing effects or states, forms of conscience in which these currents will attain a figurative readability, an objective clarity of their proper contents? The hot breath, the ardor of ideas emanates from them or are they only the reflection of an irresistible power that resides in the currents of the epoch?

When do we speak of vague or chimeric ideas? We do it when they have no place in reality. In this case, the idea cannot convince: it is only a game of the spirit, that is combined amongst many others. When does it incarnate, acquiring this suggestive force, the persuasive power, this mysterious seduction, and even this success, this brightness that illuminates from far away and points to it, in short, all the grand fascinating qualities that characterize living ideas marking an epoch? That happens when the real conditions begin to change, in the fashion of preparing the adjustment of tensions by a discharge or explosion, when these elements transform themselves.

These processes are the causes that reside in the same reality: social dislocations, which are the consequences of technological revolutions, new economic structures, and displacements of political power such that the need to change is provoked in man. A traditional state is determined by a stable social, economic, and political order which relies on customs and right. But the essential conditions of this order no longer exist. The orientation of life, which formerly established this order, has changed. The scales of value are no longer the same. The order no longer corresponds to the new criteria. The feeling of life which colored it has changed, no longer recognizing it as the form of expression that it could be. This order is then considered as a shell, resented as a prison. Thus, it should cause numerous unsustainable frictions. These provoke feelings of refusal and cravings for destruction. These pressures produce contrary pressures and give birth to a will to overthrow the order. Its defense is founded on the inertia of all that lasts, but the source of the force which renews itself no longer springs forth. Consequently, the influx of demanding new currents opens bit by bit the prejudices of the established order. It becomes crumbly, crumbling until one day, it will collapse or will be demolished by violence and tumult.

All these processes, which unfold in reality, are, quite surely, anticipated by the conscience. That which exists is firstly defeated by the spirit before collapsing in reality. The principle that gives it its sense, is denied, its value contested. The political idea is the anticipation of conscience of the real abolition of the existing state. In taking form, it becomes at the same time a norm for a new interpretation. It is equally the premonition of a different explanation of things which then struggles to be recognized. As the product of the mobile spirit, it proceeds far from the slow evolution of reality. As it is always in advance, one has the impression that it causes reality, as if it were the veritable locomotive force of history. But in fact, the political idea is only the graphic image of that which happens in things, of what happens to them. It is not a primitive image, existing since eternity and which, endowed with a mysterious force of attraction, pushes reality, in the course of centuries, to adapt itself to it. Certainly, as the graphic formula, it directs man, it is why flags float on the fields of battle. It gives explanations, helps to clearly see the situation and poses as a man, who can only see through what it means, before the task of having to decide by the function of the conditions of nature and the peculiarities of his being. It the sign which, by the fact of its visible, present being, provokes decisions. That is where its real significance resides. Nevertheless, the powers that it puts in ranks, are not the cause of this little flag, which before us, floats in the breeze. The motions are found in themselves. The unfolding of events is exclusively determined by the state of things, by the tensions inherent in reality.

The “force” of an idea and its obligatory character, which gives to man the conviction of “having to serve it”, announces that the state of things is ripe for change. It equally permits the knowledge of what extent the existing order is already weakened, near capitulation, and no longer stable and durable enough to convince itself, by its sole existence, of its unwavering strength.

Political ideas anticipate, explain, and clarify the state of things, but they equally mask them. Certainly, they are the reflection of an objective evolution, and in particular, they indicate the direction of existing movements, but they are modeled, in great part, by the force of imagination and the passion of human desires. Too easily, one takes them for original images, faithful and just, of future reality. By viewing them, one believes to perceive directly what reality will be. Thus when reality uniquely evolves according to the laws that are inherent to it, one falls into the error of believing that it feels engaged by an original image and that its veritable motive force is the desire to conform itself to this image. It may even be that the idea idea becomes an obstacle that prevents and complicates the understanding of reality. Then, it is no longer the reflection of facts, it is only the dressing covering reality, posing itself as “before it.” It is only an image behind which is hidden a very different existence.

That is the characteristic of the idea: to be the dressing that covers and hides, but which, at the same time, is convincing. And it is that – as experience teaches us – which gives it a considerable importance in the domain of politics. The indispensable conditions for the success of a political enterprise require that it is “born aloft” by ideas, that is appears as the “realization of an idea.”

Politics and Ideas – Continued

Objectively it is impossible to give them a common denominator. The moral idea would be simply annihilated, if it recognized the validity and the scales of political values. Politics would become apolitical, “non-political” and would sincerely bow before the requirements of moral ideas. They are so truly incompatible that no compromise is possible between them. Only the fact that it bears the object of ethical norms is also that of political objects, that is man, establishing a forced relation between the two, one very embroiled and confused. Man, as such a moral being, is conscious of the absolute character of morality, which permits him no exception. He equally approves the inflexibility of moral requirement with respect to politics. However, politics is the “art of the possible” and the mature exercise of handling reality and the facts by recognizing their particularity and knowing how to use them according to their nature. As such it doesn’t always attempt to have a reason, it is not greedy for prestige. It accepts the state of things as they are. Publicly, it pays homage to morality and comports itself as if it submitted to its law, as if the moral idea was its line of conduct. But immediately, it avenges itself on morality, using it with the skill of a superior player, to its own ends. Man can be seized by an idea; one wants to seem omnipotent, very well! then the Bible says it, when one wants to pull the wool over someone’s eye, he says “work in the service of humanity,” when one wants to subjugate a foolish people, he says “peace be with you” when he only wants to deal with it as a conquest by force! There is no intention which cannot drape itself in in the clothing of moral requirement and, disguised as such, presents itself as an appeal to the moral conscience of man. The moral idea as instrument of politics: it is in effect the role that it must assume when it comes in contact with politics. From the political point of view, the relation between politics and morality is cold, sober, and objective; from the moral point of view it is frivolous and cynical.

Given that there is not an objective relation between ethics and political ideas, the realization of a veritable relation between the two becomes impossible. It can only be fictitious. However, this fiction is favorable to the two parties. The apparent homage that politics now pays to ethics, even according its authority to the moral ideas. The forces of penetration, determination, and spirit increase when the goals covered by politics address themselves to men in the form of moral requirements. Draped in ethics, they have the appearance of universal validity and the suggestive and persuasive force of that which must be done. Thus the political objective often finds effective, even peremptory corroboration in the moral sphere.

The strange specificity of legality is a typical and instructive case of reinforcement and influence resulting from the participation of these ideas. The system of judicial norms seizes instinctive or human actions and then gives emphasis to their value. Acts are not judged according to their motivations and their causes but uniquely by the relation with laws and interdicts, which constitute a positive right. The fact that they respect or infringe upon the laws in effect determines the judgment to which they will be submitted. The intentions that are behind the actions are of little import, only counting when they are before the law.

When they are contrary to the law, public opinion immediately opposes them and they become suspect in their fair eyes. But when they want to observe a norm, they are approved, even if after their motivations, of which they are doubtful, are seen as unsavory. To escape a critical test, it suffices that they respond, in appearance, to the requirements of the norm. This conformity gives them weight, force which is recognized, assurance, justification, and the feeling of being untouchable. When coups erupt, the party that has legality, is always advantaged. Even if it is faint, corrupted, or loose, it will find an appeal to the authority of the law. Thus when the adversary fights on the terrain of the constitution, or defends itself there, the instigating group of the coup must have a considerable numeric superiority or a real power for victory to fall from the sky. Never does the force of legality reveal itself in a more dazzling fashion than in these limit cases, in the cases where actions are themselves contrary to the sense and letter of the law but keep an appearance of legitimacy. If, in a civil war, a man is brutally put against the wall and shot, public opinion will have difficulty accepting it, resenting it as an act of violence, like an assassination. But when the summary procedure of a court martial proceeds putting him to death, it would appear as the execution of a judgment which, ultimately, was made by application of a norm, though to some it is questionable. Now this act should be far less provocative and outrageous. The fact that, in a certain measure, it made an appeal to a law, then places this act in a larger context, giving it a more general sense, and, at the same time, it ceases to be “absurd,” that is to say worrying arbitrariness. Arbitrariness is a thing that cannot justify itself in any sense, by no superior significance, no intrinsic or apparent necessity.

In the limit cases of this type, where the true nature of the act is not sufficiently in accord with the contents of the norm before it is justified, have the characteristics of this fictitious relation which exists, in an expanded framework, between politics and ethics in general.

Such a fictitious relation exists, a fortiori and after the nature of things, between politics and religion. The words: “What use is it for man to win the world, if he has lost his soul?” enlighten the depths of religiosity. The destiny of the individual soul, which is determined by his relation with God, is the principal object of religious preoccupations. Even God became human, suffered, and died, uniquely to deliver the soul from the consequences of its sins. Religion is the way towards salvation of the soul. After it, divine providence incites the individual to follow this way. Before God, all men are equal. Our Father who art in heaven even counts the hairs on each head. The feeling of significance for myself which, at the start, is one of the sources of living religion, is exalted by religion, but under a more “civilized” form. Me, I feel “close to God.”

As we have already tried to explain it, politics has no feeling for the particular values and psychology of the individual. All on the contrary, it accords very little value to the wealth of the individual, considering the human person as easily replaceable, as a negligible quantity of this matter that it shapes. It wants to “conquer the entire world.” It does not preoccupy itself with the traumatized that could result. It is devoid of an organ to perceive them. To declare religion is a “private affair”, corresponds very much to the way of political considerations.

Yet, in the measure where it doesn’t even treat religion as as private affair, but insists on the submission of a Church recognized by all, which is the State Church, it has not, by this fact, manifested its respect and high consideration for religion. It only proved that resolute realism is not remote from any means that could permit it to carry itself to victory. Man would be religious? That he is! He he will not only be satisfied but will become more manipulable. Certain reservations in respect to the constraints and pressures that are exerted on politics will cease when man will note that even politics doesn’t hesitate to bow before spiritual values. As Machiavelli said it, it should “appear respectable towards God.”

When the Church, administrator of the holy sacraments, does politics, aspiring to temporal power and its extension, the difference between to be and to appear probably manifests itself in the most acute fashion. Since, in such case, the Church wants at all cost to achieve its projects, it must accept the necessary means. In certain epochs, it even approved atrocities such as those committed by the Inquisition. Its will to power, which aspires to a domination without limits, crushed all opposition in terror and blood. The popes became strategists and thus arose Alexander VI. Of this pope, Machiavelli recounts: “During all his life, he only deceived. No one will posses as he did the art of deception. No one knew to confirm his promises by more convincing oaths, and no one kept them less than him.” The Church, as such the administrator of religious ideology, had at its disposal an inexhaustible treasure of brilliant pretexts and convincing arguments. The religious ideas that it evoked to satisfy its thirst for power deployed their suggestive force. That was greatly sufficient to prevent their believers from returning to reason even in the face of terrible bursts of furor towards ecclesiastical power. For the faithful, the actions committed by the Church stayed religious when the curate affirmed “God wills it.” Furthermore, the Church profited from the fact that religious sentiment easily transforms itself into an exacerbated fanaticism and inflames an extreme passion. When, thanks to religious ideas, it “heated the souls of the people,” the critic is silent. Even the most atrocious act, designed and accomplished according to the law of politics, receives a religious consecration and acquires a credibility as a religious action. One pardons him of being absurd and inconceivable as soon as he believes that he is founded on the decree of Providence that no mortal can judge.

Certainly, as always, the politics of the State has equally profited from religious excitation and the influence that religious ideas can exert on man. The “Iron Sides” of Cromwell became near invincible when making battle in the English Civil War “in the name of the Supreme Being.” When Luther fulminated against the Church, which had taken a profane character, the German princes voluntarily slipped into the role of thief of ecclesiastical blessings, then acting on the order of God. But in their innermost being, they had taken the decision long ago to commit this “larceny.” Machiavelli said on this subject: “Never has a man given exceptional laws to a people without recourse to Supreme Authority, because otherwise they would not accept them. A wise man can see the benefits and the positive consequences, but the reasons for being are not so evident by their power to convince the others. Intelligent men appeal to God to get around this difficulty.”

Politics and Ideas – Continued

Men endowed with a very developed moral sense do not support the idea that the gulf between politics and morality is impassable, that the reign of morality stops where one attacks the rules of relations between peoples. They do not deny this conflict. They equally admit that it cannot be surmounted so soon. They accommodate this “imperfection.” But with perseverance, they insist that the obligatory force of ethical norms must be firstly recognized – at least in principle – for politics also. They are patient: politics should become “ethical” over time. Willingly, they accept the need to wait awhile. That is the attitude that Töltsch managed to show in his book Der Historismus und seine Ueberwindung.

“To moralize politics” is to say that behind politics there is a moral principle with its requirements and recommendations. To contribute to the victory of this principle is laudable. In an increasing measure, the direction of political affairs must be confided in personalities whose morality cannot be put in question. It should no longer be the activity of the state to exclusively affirm and develop its power. Politics should be called to realize the idea of morality equally in the life of the state. Men with the thirst for power and the passion for success which, when present, take the head of state, should be replaced by saints and ascetics. Nevertheless, all politics reposes on the existence and the activity of impulses of power and domination that nature has endowed creation with. It is only the ensemble of rules, the method helping to react to relations between states. “Moralist” politics asserts that the structure of man should change firstly, that the thirst for power must be firstly be extinguished, that man should become something other than what he is today. Those who feel an interior resistance against all of which is improbable, or, at least, unpredictable, cannot take into consideration this possibility. He deals with the existent state. But in this state, he discovers no precursor sign, no prior condition to an evolution towards the “moralization of politics” – which, objectively, would be a contradiction.

In the grand hardship of force, “moralist” politics of the state would have no example, it cannot excite and inflame. Faced with other states, it would be a phenomenon evaluated by its practical consequences. To paralyze the will to power, removing his good conscience is in the nature of “moralist” politics. If it wants to remain faithful to itself, this politics should renounce serving power. Historical experience teaches us this: power disintegrates itself when it exposes itself to general contempt, when its existence and its utility provoke disgust.

Thus, the weight of the state acting in a “moral” fashion diminishes in the context of political events. Its ethical politics has no fluidity; looked on from a certain distance, it should be considered as foolishness. It is interpreted and exploited as the symptom of interior weakness. That which seems and is felt as something courageous and grandiose, when it is the decision of a man braving the world, presents itself as the political test of the degradation of the living force of the people, as a perverse penchant for impotence, as the impulse of an annihilating suicidal. Objectively, there is no relation between politics and morality and this fact is especially most evident when a heroically moral politics presents itself, as it is ultimately, a weak criminal politics, foolishly contemptible or even demented. That as well is the point of view of the effect by which the aspect it offers, in reasonable measure, proves its moral character.

The result of an “ethical” politics has the same effect as the paralyzing internal degradation of the state or the loss of power due to a unilateral disarmament. The purity of intentions, the ideal character loses all its luminosity, all charm, which penetrates the domain of politics. It appears as the disarmed expression but it is all the same fatal to an infantile dilettantism, to a naive eccentricity. Though it is profitable and effective that politics seems to be moral faced with the innate moral sense of man, it is harmful to him to be such, only the greatest will and the possession of power gives it supremacy. Consequently, a false profession of faith in favor of the moral idea is a very effective political means. The spirit of the people is prideful, emotional, enthusiastic, and rendered docile. Foreign nations are duped to the real intentions or even brought, to their detriment, to declare confidence in this expression of will adorned with morality. Among political means, the moral idea is a ceremonial cloak, an ornament which impresses but doesn’t reveal the true nature of those who wear it. What Machiavelli said, in his famous 18^th chapter of the Prince on the subject of sovereigns, is valuable regarding the relation between politics and morality in general: “A good sovereign should appear clement, honest, obliging, sincere, and pious, and he should be so. At the same time, he should be entirely able to do all on the contrary in this fashion, if so required.”

By reason of the mysterious force of its words, the profession of faith in favor of moral ideas, even if it is not sincere, produces an effect on men. To recall the words of Luther: they follow the mouth more than the fists. The word is the matter of significance. On hearing it, the man takes it to live in his conscience. With him who pronounces the word, he feels himself called to penetrates into the communal sphere of feeling, of discovery, and of truth. He feels entirely fulfilled by the objective significance of the word, he supposes that others are equally, that he is “the word” and that he sincerely desired and honestly gave life to the word by reason of his feeling. When he uses a word, the moral man directly aims to feel it. For him, he is the exclusive means of expressing its significance. He thinks what he said. His word is a confession, it bares itself, a revelation. His sincerity resides in the fact that he feels engaged by the feeling of the word when he pronounces it. Such sincerity is the virtue he seeks to attain.

For the politician – we repeat: it is only a question of those who feel a vocation and not of the little politicians, such as those deputies in the Reichstag and the heads of parties – which, for all politicians – their words included – is a means of obtaining to success.

The meaning of the word has little importance to him. He examines the effect that he can produce by reason of this intrinsic meaning and of the receptivity of men who hear the word. He pronounces it not because he endorsed its meaning or because he would want to testify in its favor. He pronounces it to incite men to adopt a certain comportment, which as we know from experience, appears when the word in question arrives in his ears. Thus he celebrates justice – not because he decided to act in a just fashion – but because men have confidence in him and allow their director all the more latitude because they believe that he practices the virtue of justice. The cunning Talleyrand was conscious of this state of things, when he would affirm, as a true politician, in a malicious and cynical fashion, that the words serves to conceal the thought.

An ethical personality finds itself, without comprehending anything, disconcerted before a formulation designed and entirely felt from the point of view of politics. It experiences disgust, turning with anger: he misunderstands the lies and the perfidy which are only pure political wisdom.

Germany produced a person of a certain rank, of a European reputation who, in a strange fashion, bound by a moral passion pronounced a tendency that influenced political events: it was Friedrich Förster. It not necessary to say that it is a venal subject or that he is a villainous traitor to his people. He felt a “sublime” vocation of wanting to submit German politics to the morality of the Sermon on the Mountain. He would interpret the end of the war as evidence striking the German people to incite them to return. With a severe tenacity and an inflexible fierceness, he would address his exhortations to penitence to the politicians of the German nation. He tried to persuade the powers to “purify” German politics and transform it into a work of faith, holiness, and mercy. However, his personality and his intentions had a typical destiny he had to undergo. The fact that he enjoyed with such understanding the art of politics, which requires the capable men and not the moralists to make a profession of their faith, shortly made him slide into the role of Don Quixote, a role which fit him well quite a bit. The inevitable result: the deception of the disregarded prophet who overwhelmed his German people with wild and violent accusations which would furnish the enemies of Germany, France in particular, with easy pretexts and justifications for their politics of force, thirsting for vengeance towards Germany. Thus, Förster became the principle witness, voluntarily cited by voracious French politicians. With that blissful knowledge, Poincaré mentioned him in his memoirs as a “sincere German,” the distinguished professor! The true role of Förster was that of saluting German impotence with an overflowing satisfaction, to preach the necessity of this period of impotence with a pressing importunity and to stigmatize the spirit of the will to German liberation as a malign attack against morality. But in that, he supports the brutal supremacy of France. By dragging Germany before the tribunal of the Sermon on the Mountain, he became, despite himself, by virtue of the laws of politics which rule the world, a lamentable creature of French politics. Today, he seems repugnant and oblivious because he resembles one who has not made account of its contradictions. How could moral authority benefit a then overwhelmed Germany which received no favorable prejudice when France guarded its position by force with the aid of toxic gas, tanks, black or mixed soldiers, and other vexing measures directed towards the part of the German people who would be perfectly peaceful?

The condition in which Europe finds itself today has an origin in the cynical abuse of the moral idea: it’s this abuse which characterizes it. Politics seized morality to give itself good conscience and to justify a work done from hate, the thirst for vengeance, and rapacity. The Diktat of Versailles is this terrible work which permits the deprivation of sixty million people of their liberty and honor. The Diktat of Versailles aims to annihilate. However, it must not appear as an act of violence. The conquerors serve themselves with the frivolous audacity of their supremacy to inscribe the events of this great war of four years in the ranks of moral consideration. As such these triumphalists, they think to profit in this way of envisioning things. They deformed and extended the maxim “might is right” to the point of giving it a new sense, to know: might makes moral. The defensive combat that the German people lead with unequaled courage, was labeled as an odious crime against humanity. The war was no longer recognized as an extension of politics by other means, but presented as an unpardonable violation of moral law. Evidently, Germany was the only victim of this new concept. The war was its fault and all responsibility was imputed to it. The victors were very strong in imposing upon public opinion their interpretation of events, that is to say: those who defended themselves against an odious attack, those who had acted in a state of legitimate defense, and which, at the end of the war, would be well confirmed by morality: “in this world, it should pay for its errors.”

The war as a moral lesson, that was the most wicked, most hateful blow that the victors had dealt to the defeated, who, in their impotence, should remain passive and endure and support it all. There, the victors, when they came to account with the vanquished, placed themselves under a moral plan. All that was done to the vanquished, would be represented as reparation, expiation, and punishment to satisfy the universal moral order. The conqueror, only abused his supremacy, to play the role of the justice who redresses wrongs. Up to the present, when states took up arms against each other, they then reunited, when the conflict was finished, around a round table. Certainly, the victor held the costs against the defeated, his positions in the negotiation was weaker – nevertheless they would negotiate. But now, after this perfidious moralization of war, the vanquished – because he is the vanquished – is held culpable. One does not negotiate with him, one judges him and pronounces a sentence of culpability. Thus Versailles was the moral condemnation of Germany. Now does one comprehend why in the peace treaty, it should impute all the responsibility for the war to Germany? This allegation it levied permitted it to transpose the war and its end, from the political terrain to the moral terrain. The imputation of the entire responsibility for the war to Germany isn’t a simple clause of the Diktat: it is its heart, its spiritual basis, even the principle. If one would abandon it, the Diktat would lose its obligatory character, its moral and judicial validity. It would only remain an accidental, arbitrary act without objective foundation. For this reason, the struggle against the lies concerning the responsibility for the war is not effectively a little naive game or caprice. It directly effects the vital nerve of the Diktat, the spiritual reason that justifies its existence.

That is the secret of those who have the supremacy of force, they have to seize even the conscience of those who, at the beginning, oppose them. The supremacy of the Western powers was so overwhelming and intimidating to Germany, even that faith in the right of resistance, the necessity of struggle was shaken. The people finished by seeing its righteous cause with the eyes of its most determined enemies. They would begin to say: never should this war have taken place. The fact that it erupted is entirely our fault. We must confess it and repent. The military collapse of 1918 was accompanied by a political collapse. During which the conquerors would prove their greatest mastery of politics, Germany would do penance. Eisner was only a typical representative. His heart beat for “noble France” which had started a crusade against “Prussian” and “obstinate” Germany. If, now, the German people were capable of renouncing their Prussian and militarist mentality and bowing, as morally refurbished, before Clemenceau, then they would be accorded the grace of a just peace.

Since “Prussianism” was not totally exterminated in Berlin, they would conclude the peace via Munich. If, for an hour, they would be left alone with Clemenceau, he could have arranged everything. The eminent Social Democrats, who during the war, had denied all fault of Germany, suddenly anguished, made a confession of culpability. However, the man who will express the most panicked politics and disorder of spirit which had seized the German people in the face of this sudden and unexpected catastrophe was Erzberger. As such “the active leader,” accomplished the flight of politics to morality in the most unconscionable and deplorable fashion. “We must all confess,” he said, “and then we will be pardoned.” He himself would confess everything. But since the conquerors were not moralists but politicians they weren’t going to pardon him and they used their confessions as a precious political means to permit the success of a trick consisting of making this terrifying peace seem just and merited.

In concluding these reflections, we can say that, on principle and by nature, there is no bridge that can link politics to morality, the political action to the ethical idea. Even in that, the deepest and hidden, even the most vague, affinity cannot be detected, no affinity could exist despite their innumerable divergences. The two spheres are so antithetical that they stayed closed on themselves, finding each other foreign, in an inaccessibility without possible comprehension. A vital interaction is unthinkable. They submitted to completely different laws.

Politics and Ideas – Continued

If politics is to ensure success, the human factors must be taken into account uniquely as they are, without allowing diversion. If it should become the prey of ideals that man professes with enthusiasm, bravado, and nostalgia, politics would see it as it would or should be. It would venture on firm ground and slip into blurriness. It can envision that man is seized and moved by moral principles. In this fact, it would only become the victim of the illusion that man is, by the same experience, a being showing some moral capacity. A mysterious force of attraction exercises itself on the nature of politics and facts, reality, and beliefs.

They mutually attract as if they were under the hold of a mysterious force emanating from the heart of things. They agree to correspond with each other. Thus in the political world, man is only his vanity, his egoism, his weakness, and his half controlled impulses. The man as that “freely developed personality” has the air of a will–o’-the-wisp which would lure it into the temptation of following the wrong path.

Consequently, an old wisdom incites incites good legislators to always envision the worst and to suppose that man is too easily inclined to do evil in a measure without fixed limits. They see man with the eyes of La Rochefoucauld. They no longer believe, as Rousseau, that man is naturally good and do not doubt that he can be fundamentally evil. They approve Saint Paul, who complained of wanting good but not achieving it. Schopenhauer said: “Learn to know man in all his weakness, as the doctor does it, in all his wickedness, as the jurist does it , in all his foolishness, as the theologian does it.” Thus politics sees him simultaneously in his weakness, wickedness, and foolishness. All political rulers of real grandeur are profoundly misanthropic. Machiavelli, the greatest political thinker, was equally a misanthrope. Misanthropy is a true element brought to bear by his system. In the third chapter of his work treating the state, he said: “History proves it by many examples and all the writers agree to say that the society that wishes to give a constitution and laws to a republic, must presume that all men are bad and believe that they will show the wickedness of their spirit whenever they will have the occasion.”

Machiavelli reaffirms this conviction when he wrote: “The preceding is proved by the fact that men will never do good without constraints, that all is disorder and confusion when he is arbitrarily free or allowed to be so.”

There is nothing else to do than to note that the matter of politics is “that which is”, while the matter of morals is “that which should be,” besides that, the scale of values in politics is success, in the domain of morals, good will, pure intention, the current moral sentiments, it is in noting this, that the real difference between the two concepts is revealed. Only he who is conscious of the essence of these two domains can comprehend their relation, which as always, has occupied the thought of people. Max Weber also thought about this problem in his important essay, Politik als Beruf. He noted an opposition between the ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility. According to Weber, there is one difference, “If it is according to the maxim of the ethic of conviction – to say religion ‘Christ does good and it’s God who decides success’ – according to the ethic of responsibility: one must respond to the predictable consequences of his actions.” This distinction is pertinent. Yet one demands, if in the representation of the ethic responsibility, one doesn’t abuse the term and the concept of ethics. It is all the same solely that is is agreed to call it evaluation according to success.

But there is no longer anything to be seen in ethics that is beyond compromise. For it, the doubting middle cannot even justify if they served moral ends. From the point of view of success, this middle is useful or effective, or absurd and useless, but never moral or immoral. Morality is always based on conviction, on the intention of will. Thus good will is given to actions even lacking a moral aspect. But only in the measure where the motive of the action is moral, it partakes in morality. Certainly, in the sense of responsibility, politics courageously assumed touches of the moral sphere, but that does not suffice for an action to be moral. The statesman who uses lies and duplicity to augment the prestige and the power of his country, starts from a feeling of responsibility towards the grandeur of his people, cannot justify himself from the moral point of view. Even his sense of responsibility does not make his lies and duplicity moral acts. It is undeniable that the points of view of political responsibility and of morality have no objective relation. Sometimes they can coincide, sometimes they cross, sometimes they contradict each other. When they are in opposition, the politician doesn’t have a choice. He must decide from the point of view of the feeling of responsibility. His sense of responsibility will even prevent him from accomplishing a moral action if it is bad for his people.

Those who feel truly engaged by morality, of the sort who do not want to save their people at the price of abandoning their moral principles, are certainly capable of many things, but in no case could they have the vocation of statesman. As Treitschke said in his Politik: “The statesman does not have the right of warming his hands over the smoldering ruins of his country with the comfortable satisfaction of never having lied. It is a virtue reserved to monks.”

Naturally, he doesn’t have the right, it is the situation that forbids him. His errors and omissions influence the destiny of millions of men. All error, foolishness, or haste, but equally the wisdom and the fitness to know when to seize an opportunity has a beneficent or baneful effect, but it has little import to the good conscience of the statesman. His particular task resides in the fact that the fate of millions of men is more important to him than the peace of his soul. It is possible that he prefers this peace to present itself before moral judges, but it would be condemned by the judges of politics.

He must accept the fact that man is inevitably seen under two different and opposing angles whether he is seen as a human being or a political subject. Morality is a personal affair. The man as that individual who received the task of being a citizen of the moral world. To rise above the empire of feeling constitutes the greatest value, the highest dignity, as Kant said it, “Character is freedom and independence in respect to the mechanisms of nature.” It is only according to the laws of morality, that man is truly autonomous and self determined. Under the plan of morality, one gives an immense weight to the individual who is placed in direct relation with the universe. He has an experience without limits. His personality is more important than the world and its riches. “The greatest affair of man is to know what he must be to be a man.” It is in the nature of morality to consider character as an objective. He does not permit himself to lower himself to the rank of the middle. The sentiment, exacerbated by the right to particularity, to individuality, is normal in this domain. The cultivated pride in character, which makes constant effort towards perfection, is opposed to an existence that would be purely physical. In the sphere of morality, character is considered as the summit attaining infinity. To be known for “character” is the “supreme happiness.”

On the plane of political activities, man seems rather more self-effacing, pale, monotonous. The importance which, on the moral level, resides in the man himself, is suddenly elsewhere, it is beyond him. For a creative force, which grabs all, he is only matter, he is only a little speck. Suddenly, the extent of his culture, his spirituality, and the stage of his moral evolution become secondary. Like a spinning wheel, he is integrated into a system, regardless of that which he could be besides. One should recall the role of a man in the organization of the army. Individual particularity is completely effaced and even considered as a disruptive element. The sentiment of individual importance is reduced to nearly zero. His value no longer resides in that which he is, but in the function attributed to him. Uniform, grade, decoration determine his position. One doesn’t attempt to count the stage of his moral evolution. No man is an end in himself. All are means. All the personal and subtle emotions freeze, putting himself “on guard.” All is done as part of a mass, which must take on ranks, which must integrate itself and submit. Man is only a physical being, an animal. His personal character is hidden under his uniform, and sometimes he even denies it.

Given this state of things, one understands the discomfort of the intellectual before the state. The importance accorded to personal particularity, to individuality, to self-assured personality is constrained by the spirit of the state. Before its laws, everyone is equal. The state is incapable of understanding the profundity and finesse of men, and it cannot see them. Those do not exist for it. It only wants one to obey its laws. Moral law, that the being bears in himself, is not valuable before it. It is when moral laws oppose themselves to laws proper that it occupies itself with them. It requires that it is repealed and if it faces a refusal to obey, it does not hesitate to punish. These last years, the conscientious objectors have had that experience.

The evaluation of what is human digs a gulf between the moral and the political. On one side, man, as character, is the supreme good, on the other, he is only a tiny particle, with no proper value, tossed about in all senses. In morality, one accords to him the greatest importance, in politics – none. Only the things done by the state can give him importance.

It is true that ethical norms claim a universal validity. Its interior assurance, its untouchable authority can only triumph on the condition that is can be applied, in principle, everywhere man is. It would lose its unswerving force of obligation, if it would accept, willingly, limits on its field of application. Man, feeling bound by moral law, requires that it reigns in an unlimited fashion without exception. He would immediately claim an exception for himself, if he had the precedent.

For this reason, no attempt to delimit the moral and the political can lead. Human sentiment, which fears the clouds of morality, will immediately protest against such limitation. When under a logical plan, it seems acceptable, the heart will refuse itself to be convinced all the same.

From this fact, such reflections give the impression that the litigious question stays unresolved. It is the lot of the active statesman to be exposed to this uncertain light which results. Without a doubt, his private life submits to moral law. It is equally true that the “political action” of the little politicians of our democracy, our mediocre parliamentarians, and party leaders should submit to moral requirements. It doesn’t have much of a political breadth to have the right to be moral. But even if he is all the same, the little politician cannot wrap himself in the tragedy of the statesman. It only shows that he is a repugnant scoundrel.

The true statesman, accomplishing his great political missions has submitted – we have already admitted this – his activities to a particular law. His acts, some of which clash with ethical norms, have something strangely enigmatic. Timidly, we note their illicit character, but at the same time we recognize their objective necessity. The disquiet of our moral feeling doesn’t prevent us from accepting the inevitable, all the same, and it finds reflection in the expression: “politics breaks down character.” In all cases, we will consider the statesman as a function of destiny, as the bearer of great impersonal vital forces, we are ready to renounce the scales of values concerning him. Given that he impresses us as an unchained force of nature, we find it much easier not to judge him from a moral point of view as, for evident reasons, we would not judge natural phenomena, such as waterfalls or storms.

Some personalities like Frederick II have their individuality absorbed by the service of the state. He retains nothing of his egoism to be point where he becomes exclusively the organ of the state. Also, we no longer attempt to judge their individual actions according to the scale of moral values. In the measure where moral conscience concerns itself with such persons, it does it in the fashion of considering, in full, the near complete effacement of himself as a moral quality, not in the current sense but as the greatest value.

Politics is exclusively subject to its intrinsic proper needs, to the particular norms resulting from the state of things that concern it. Without a doubt, it situates itself beyond morality. The difficulty in accepting this results from the fact that politics provokes instinctive protests, born from the sentiment that being human has its proper value. As a general rule, man is incapable of reducing the sentiment of his proper value when it is considered as a product of nature, such as with other natural phenomena. He is repulsed to be only the material of the creative political force. He does not want to be a mean, as the other things in nature are. His pride, his need to affirm himself revolt. But when man requires to be placed before nature, by reason of his interior value, he is already in the sphere of moral law. The man who fears being used, exploited, and even destroyed by political events, as if he were prime material, tries at all cost to divest himself from the dangerous possibilities of politics. That is why he always leaves suspended the fact of knowing if finally the political act must not justify itself before moral conscience. This conscience that man opposes to politics, is the weapon he uses to guard for his character a certain liberty, despite the order of submission and adaptation that politics gives him. This position of defense retrenched in the individual who wants to affirm, against the general requirements of politics, is the image of tension between the moral imperative and the political act. For objective reasons, this tension is permanent. The antagonism, pushed to the extreme, incites the individual, conscious of his value, serves a moral motivation to refuse, on principle, the right to existence of politics as the object of politics, that is to say, the state, as well. The anarchists shoot with this consequence. They aspire to a state to a state without authority, no order, only the sovereign personality pushing to accede to free and unconditional self determination.

To repeat it another time, it is in the nature of politics to evaluate the terrain of reality and not that of moral requirements. But the convictions of man, which incite him to support the universal truth of ethical norms, is equally a reality. Politics puts itself in an embarrassing situation, if it dares to enter into conflict with ethical norms or if it obeys, in a provocative and non-dissimulating fashion, its proper law, it is detained by ethical norms expressly and forever. It would immediately arouse an instinctive aversion. In losing the support of its own public, it would deprive itself of all the means to succeed. Thus, it would become “an evil and beastly politics,” which is to say, a politics against nature. For this reason, it submits to the law of “as if.” It must do “as if,” that is to say, do in a way resembling acceptance of ethical norms and does not hesitate to give proof of its good will. It is necessary that political actions keep up appearances. They are inopportune when one can suspect them of being immoral. They can be it, they will often be it, but never should they give that appearance. Frequently they have no importance to the moral plan. Then they have nothing inherent in their being to provoke a value judgment. Do not let it appear as a tendency to violate ethical norms since you spoke in their favor. The sole absence of such a tendency permits one to believe that political action and morals rules will not be in disagreement. In a certain measure, the fact that politics has the object of the public good assures it a favorable prejudice. But when politics gives proof of moderation, a favorable quality in this domain, it immediately has the impression that it is on the way to virtue. When there is moderation, there is always a reflection of moral radiance. Even moderation in bad actions throws a moral light on the depths of corruption. Certainly, moderation in politics is only the expression of a great lucidity: one is conscious that all exaggeration provokes destructive and adverse reactions – but this wisdom is interpreted as purity of intention. This opportunity, carefully calculated and weighed – is the most final, the most subtle, but also the most profitable product of such wisdom – it is considered as a happy sign of moral aspiration. In this sense, the peace of Nikolsburg that Bismarck would accord with Austria in 1866, was moderate, opportune, and “moral.”

Politics and Ideas – 1929

One can ask if the relation between politics and ideas truly poses a problem. For the simple soul, the idea is the direction point that is the driving force of action, as well. He considers politics as that ensemble of provisions taken to put in practice the idea by which he understands the state and its institutions. This idea appears as “the task of politics.” The objection according to which political realities are always in flagrant contradiction with the initial idea, is rejected when one notes with sadness and resignation that imperfection is the destiny of this fallen world. The idea is always lost when it takes the dress of reality. Certainly, that is the tragedy of our human existence, but, in no case, one does not contest the importance of the idea to act on reality.

Finally, the relation between politics and ideas would be easy to understand if politics was only effectively the realization of an idea that, of course, would never reach perfection, given the law of the world. But, in reflecting a bit more, the evident simplicity of this relation is brought into doubt. A good number of historical observations and political experiences then confirms the doubts.

Let us turn, for example, to the epoch of the French Revolution. The ideas “liberty, equality, fraternity” arise in all their splendor. They would seize the heart of the French – and not only the French. They equally inflame the Germans. On the right bank of the Rhine, we receive, with open arms, the Army of the Revolution. It promised “liberty, equality, fraternity” and it will blaze the path to the politics of force and subjugation by Napoleon.

And the experience that we had with the Fourteen Points of Wilson? In its extreme misery, the German people would cling there with an ardent faith. A Minister of Finance in Saxony, post-revolutionary but bourgeois, would confess such great hope in a book that he will entitle: Wilson, das Shicksalsbuch Deutschlands und der Welt. In this epoch, he could count on the approbation of millions of Germans, fans of Wilson, during which he would write: “the thought of Wilson is our destiny and the gospel of a new epoch.” For us, the accomplishment of this gospel took place at Versailles.

On one side, liberty, equality, fraternity, and the Fourteen Points of Wilson, on the other side, Napoleon and Versailles! There, it is no longer about the realization of an idea under an imperfect form. The meaning of the idea and political reality are contradictory, are irreconcilable. The contradiction is all the more painful by the confidence that the idea gave to the decisive causes of this terrible reality, directing everything else.

Thus, it is evident that the relation between ideas and politics is not direct. To understand this relation, it is first necessary to analyze what we mean by the idea.

The term “idea” has many meanings. In the first place, the ethical norm, the obligatory duty, the moral requirement have the value of an idea. In this context, “oriented by an idea” means to be moral and to act morally. Sincerity, humanity, and justice are ideas of this type.

These ideas have always played a role in politics. More than one time, they received the mission of encouraging the perfection of man and to help sincerity, humanity, and justice triumph. To set such goals in politics means that one requires that it is moral.

From the moment that we have this requirement, one is confronted by the ambiguity of the relation between politics and ideas under the form of the strange relation there is between politics and morals. We know how many men have the tendency to subordinate politics to morality. He would like moral principles to have an absolute power. But during the years of war, he had taken recognition of certain limits on the scope of morality all the same. For the love of his country, he must kill. To fool the adversary, to bring him to err, to denigrate him expressly and consciously had become necessities. The halo that would surround national egoism would shine more than these moral values.

We note that “idea” can mean moral requirement, moral law. In this case it generally has an absolute obligatory character. It is that which must be. It incites us to choose it as a guideline for our politics.

Certainly the idea is another thing than an ethical norm. It can be the symbolic expression of the tendencies of the epoch, of the spirit of the age that predominates or begins to do so this day. In certain periods it was altogether normal not to put in question the legality of rules or authoritarian orders. The idea of authority dominated all the political activities, and would dominate entirely the concept of life. It was characterized by the murky inclination of the spirit of the times for authoritarian forms. These periods are followed by others during the course of which, the authoritarian character of the social order would seem insupportable. The men of the new epoch would revolt against authority. They would feel themselves provoked to rebellion. The would act to undermine it and to remove it. All of these tendencies with their everyday effects that would gnaw at the existing situation to undermine it, would find in the idea of liberty and its expression that which would fascinate and encourage them. The ideas of tradition and of progress, of universalism and of individualism, of the social and political structure of the nation equally symbolize the currents of the epoch. Behind these ideas, one feels the beating of the heart and hidden individual desires, in certain social layers or in all the people. By imagination, they anticipate the desired state. These are the ideas in the current sense of the term. Although it does not truly act on moral norms, they appropriate all of the same forms; they also take on the appearance of that which must be done. They want to be considered as obligations, as a value which, by reason of its deep significance, has the right to impose conduct on anyone acting. These ideas, by taking of form of that which must be done, receive a reflection of moral dignity. The desires that it hides behind the currents of the epoch, of which they are the receptacle, are ennobled and transposed from the sphere of chance into that of the necessary.

To be comprehensive, it is necessary to mention a third accepted meaning of the term “idea.” The idea is equally the concept of a thing, the common essence in a series of like things, the sum of the peculiarities of natural phenomena, the veritable objective content of a thing that penetrates the spiritual sphere. The idea is the archetype of the thing. It is that which is permanent and universal behind the change and the apparent diversity of reality. In this context, it is somewhat important that we consider the archetype as a pure product of the spirit, as an abstraction, or according to Plato, that that which only exists, as metaphysical reality. Ideas in this sense of the term, connect themselves to substances, qualities, activities, and relations, to works of art and nature, to that which is precious and that which is without value, to that which is remarkable or banal, in brief, to all that can be perceived by the senses, grasped by intuition, or apprehended by the spirit. So we speak of the idea of the horse or of the book, of the mountain and the water, of the big and small, of fall and rise, of dependence or autonomy, of gold or filth – of the economy and the state. Finally, we proceed to the content of those ideas that are descriptive findings. They do not have the obligatory character of that which must be done. Their task consists of leading us to the image of the pure essence. In this sense, the idea of the state is not the model of the state as it should be. It is only the sum of all the experiences, characteristic traits, released by thought, of a state that lives in history and whose existence leads to what it is.

We have analyzed what on means by “idea.” It is also necessary to speak of that which is “politics.”

After a phrase known from Bismarck, politics is the “art of the possible.” This interpretation further concerns the method that is the essence of politics. It is the activity of the state and that is what matters. Finally, it only exists when there is a state. Every form of state affirms it, to extend itself, wanting the power to utilize it and to play a role in the world. Each state has a line of conduct, a rule that dictates to it vital, effective, and useful measures that it must take, given the circumstances and the relations it finds itself in. This line of conduct is “the reason of the state.” To discover it is less an affair of reflection and logic than the product of observation, intuition, a very fine flair, an innate instinct, a pleasant tactfulness. Politics is the ensemble of actions commanded by the reason of the state. It comprises all that serves the conservation and expansion of its power. Politics, in all other accepted meanings of the term, as an example, party politics, cultural or social politics, has nothing as fundamental. The concept of “politics” is simply transposed into the domains of activities which, directly or indirectly, are in the zone of influence serving the will and the life of the state, or that which has adopted certain forms of politics proper.

The instinct of conservation of the state and its will to life are absolute criteria. It is simply unthinkable to find a value larger than that for which the state should or could sacrifice its existence. The church would want to impose on it superior norms, of a religious or moral order. The Catholic Church, in principle, wants this today. The modern state cannot bend itself to this requirement. It considers its pride “sacred.” Fundamentally, consciously, deliberately, the modern state cannot recognize anything above itself. It wants to be sovereign over all plans. That which is useful to it, that which augments its power and increases its value, embodies its morality. It is true that it finds this sort of morality a bit suspect. It finds itself outside of the ethical sphere. Manifestly it participates in that which is natural and elementary. Its categorical imperative commands it to aspire to power without bounds, independent, and able to deploy itself at its liberty on the interior and exterior. If it was true, as Burckardt said, that power per se is to be evil, then the state would be evil and, following, all political activity. Because, basically, this activity wants to manifest itself to subdue or counterbalance. If one wants to succeed there and not to go to loss, one must recognize the relations of force, the possibilities that are found there, but, at the same time, it is necessary to be ready to use it without gentleness. To use up that which is given, that which exists, is in the nature of politics.

This scale is impersonal, the focus being put on the subject. Considering the nature of this success, the result finds itself at the same level as the effect produced by natural or technical phenomena in the same manner where one judges things by their result. If one looks singularly on the effect of human actions, as one does with natural or technical processes, the motives and the intentions are exposed in a strangely neutralizing light. The motivations, the origins, and the orientations are without importance. The words of Kant lose their value: “in this world and even beyond that, it is not possible to consider as an absolute good anything other than good will.” The link between intention, motive, expression of will, and, finally, the result of the action is interpreted as a type of natural relation between cause and effect. It is seen as a natural phenomenon and appears like the course of a storm. The air is charged with electricity, the tension increases, the explosion follows. This storm can refresh the country or leave the fields devastated by hail. To joyously approve the phenomenon of the storm in the first case would be as absurd to express horror in the second case. In an analogous manner, the action judged according to the effects that it produces is beyond good or evil. Political activity is such a game and the struggle of forces that must be treated as totally morally indifferent. Thus one places on the same level the cannons, airplanes, toxic gas, number of inhabitants, the fertility of the soil, the apparatus of industrial production, the organization of the state, the intelligence of its leaders, the national ambition of its citizens, the capacity for dedication of the masses, the extent of living religiosity, and the force of moral sentiment. “It is necessary give to the people its religion”: that is not the expression of anguish from a religious man who fears fears for the rule of his religion or who is convinced of its intrinsic and absolute value, but only the formulation of political and technical instructions: one wouldn’t want to govern a village of peasants who didn’t believe in God, as Voltaire would express in a more cynical manner.

The hierarchy of these forces is established after the result. The rank is not determined by an intrinsic value which suffices for a degree of utility and opportunity. Psychic forces, to properly speak, occupy a place in part. Sometimes, when they manifest themselves massively and simultaneously, they release an elementary violence. When they appear so intensified and exacerbated, they become something terribly unsettling, they are not part of something that we can count, or even approximate. These elementary impulses are something totally different. Their particular character makes them difficult to appreciate them as something physical and perceptible, it is recognized if one considers them as “imponderables.” Thus, one understands that politics attempts all the same to submit them to the law of success and calculation and utility, despite the respectful linguistic distinction.

The account of political results is cheaper than the data, the starting point of calculation, evaluated with exactitude and objectivity. The data at the base of politics and its real material is man.