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indicate that the states arose by conquest; if Herder calls nations the natural organs of humanity and states only artificial organs, he brings out fairly accurately the function of state as against nation.[1] In mixed states one nation is the so-called dominant nation; as a rule it is a larger nation than the subject nations. Only Austria-Hungary and Turkey portray the type of states, in which the minority rules over the majority.
The difference between the nation and state has been characterised by some Pangermanists by the comparison: Goethe-Bismarck. A nation is a spiritual and cultural organisation—a free organisation given by nature; the state, being above all organised force, has been the subjugator of its own nation and of other nations. The present state developed out of the primitive military and religious organisation; having been organised by a dynasty and a certain class (aristocracy-plutocracy), it paid no attention to national differences; that is why states are mixed.
The states were formed at a time, when the spirit of domineering, of aggression and exploiting had been rampant and general; the principle of nationality is comparatively modern and has been established in opposition to the state. The nation exerts its influence freely (the influence of Shakespeare, Byron, Goethe, &c.), the state exerts its influence through its power of compulsion (the influence of Bismarck, not only as long as he was in office as against the influence of Goethe, but also the influence of Bismarck’s idea after his death). The nation is a democratic organisation—each individual is called, each one may make himself felt;—while the state is an aristocratic organisation, compelling, supressing: democratic states are only now arising.
Specialists in the science of state find it perplexing to explain the rise and substance of state. History teaches that there are two fundamental forms and quatities of the political organisation of society: aristocracy and democracy. Aristocracy has an oligarchical character, and a special form of oligarchy is the monarchy, which, in the low state of scientific and philosophical criticism hitherto existing, was conceived (not by the masses only!) as theocracy: the primitive anthropomorphism could not conceive of democracy, therefore a monarch became the representative and at the same time the almost deified wielder of all power (the sovereign). The ideas of God and sovereign are found together in a strange way. All monarchies were theocratic, and in the Middle Ages in particular, the great papal imperial theocracy was constituted. By the Reformation this great theocracy was broken up into smaller theocracies. Thus arose the modern absolutist states; but in opposition to them and within them, democracy gained strength. So at the present stage of political development, monarchical theocracies and the beginnings of democracy stand opposed to each other (republics, constitutional monarchies, various attempts of national autonomy, federation and self-government within the states).
One of the powerful democratic forces is the national movement: the striving of subject nations for political independence and their striving for the recognition of their nationality as a higher and more valuable principle than the state. In Prussia, Austria, Russia, Turkey, the national movements naturally fought against absolutism, and absolutism was the enemy of nationalism.
The difference between the Allies and the Central Powers is the difference between democracy and theocratic monarchies: on the side of the Allies stand republics and constitutional monarchies—Prussia and Germany stand at the head of the mediæval theocratic monarchies. Prussia-Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Bulgaria did not become allied simply because they were neighbours, but also on account of the internal political kinship. These are undemocratic, absolutist, theocratic states, in which the parliament, even though it nominally makes the laws, has only an advisory and secondary function—political decision and leadership are left to the monarch and his aristocratic co-rulers. This difference, therefore,
- ↑ The racial mixture of almost all nations points to the same fact; here we deal with the nations preserving their different languages.
