716.
We take it as a principle that only individuals feel any
responsibility. Corporations are invented to do what the individual
has not the courage to do. For this reason all communities are vastly
more upright and instructive, as regards the nature of man, than the
individual who is too cowardly to have the courage of his own desires.
All altruism is the prudence of the private man. societies are not
mutually altruistic. The commandment, "Thou shalt love thy next-door
neighbour," has never been extended to thy neighbour in general. Rather
what Manu says is probably truer: "We must conceive of all the States
on our own frontier, and their allies, as being hostile, and for the
same reason we must consider all of their neighbours as being friendly
to us."
The study of society is invaluable, because man in society is far more
childlike than man individually. Society has never regarded virtue as
anything else than as a means to strength, power, and order. Manu's
words again are simple and dignified: "Virtue could hardly rely on her
own strength alone. Really it is only the fear of punishment that keeps
men in their limits, and leaves every one in peaceful possession of his
own."
717.
The State, or _unmorality_ organised, is from within--the police, the
penal code, status, commerce, and the family; and from without, the
will to war, to power, to conquest and revenge.
A multitude will do things an individual will not, because of the
division of responsibility, of command and execution; because the
virtues of obedience, duty, patriotism, and local sentiment are all
introduced; because feelings of pride, severity, strength, hate,
and revenge in short, all typical traits are upheld, and these are
characteristics utterly alien to the herd-man.
718.
You haven't, any of you, the courage either to kill or to flog a man.
But the huge machinery of the State quells the individual and makes him
decline to be answerable for his own deed (obedience, loyalty, etc.).
Everything that a man does in the service of the State is against his
own nature. Similarly, everything he learns in view of future service
of the State. This result is obtained through division of labour (so
that responsibility is subdivided too):--
The legislator--and he who fulfils the law.
The teacher of discipline--and those who have grown hard and severe
under discipline.
719.
A division of labour among the emotions exists inside society, making
individuals and classes produce an imperfect, but more useful, kind
of soul. Observe how every type in society has become atrophied with
regard to certain emotions with the view of fostering and accentuating
other emotions.