put into practice the moral duty on earth. "The State," says Treitschke,
"is a moral community. It is called upon to educate the human race by
positive achievement, and its ultimate object is that a nation should
develop in it and through it into a real character; that is, alike for
nation and individuals, the highest moral task."

This highest expansion can never be realized in pure individualism. Man
can only develop his highest capacities when he takes his part in a
community, in a social organism, for which he lives and works. He must
be in a family, in a society, in the State, which draws the individual
out of the narrow circles in which he otherwise would pass his life, and
makes him a worker in the great common interests of humanity. The State
alone, so Schleiermacher once taught, gives the individual the highest
degree of life.[E]

[Footnote E: To expand the idea of the State into that of humanity, and
thus to entrust apparently higher duties to the individual, leads to
error, since in a human race conceived as a whole struggle and, by
Implication, the most essential vital principle would be ruled out. Any
action in favour of collective humanity outside the limits of the State
and nationality is impossible. Such conceptions belong to the wide
domain of Utopias.]

War, from this standpoint, will be regarded as a moral necessity, if it
is waged to protect the highest and most valuable interests of a nation.
As human life is now constituted, it is political idealism which calls
for war, while materialism--in theory, at least--repudiates it.

If we grasp the conception of the State from this higher aspect, we
shall soon see that it cannot attain its great moral ends unless its