In the middle ages 233

of Doctor Marsal these suggestive words: To die

for France is not to die for a collective entity, but

for all Frenchmen present and to come. To climb

the ladder and go over the top, is to mount the

scaffold. They did it. For whom? For France.

But France is the sum total of all those who are

destined to be Frenchmen. It is our very selves,

you and I, — we Frenchmen, I repeat."

The underlying reason for this doctrine, — that

the state large or small is not a "thing-in-itself," an

entity distinct from the citizens who compose it — is

furnished by the scholastic philosophy itself, and

we have already seen what it is. For scholastic

philosophy the world is pluralistic, the only real

beings existing are individual beings, — for instance,

such and such oak, such and such bee, such and such

man." And since unity follows being (ens et vmum

convertuntur) , individuals alone have a physical

and internal unity. A forest of oaks, a hive of

bees, a team of horses, a steamboat, a house, an

army, a parish, a city, a state, — none of these desig-

nate real, physical beings ; in consequence they have

not the unity that belongs to a real substance.

15 Sortir de la tranch^e, sur I'^chelle, c'est monter k I'echafaud.

lis y montent. Pour qui? Pour la France. Mais la France, c'est

la somme des destinies fran^aises. C'est nous, je vous r^p^te,"

p. 173, edit. 1915, Paris, Plon.

16 See ch. IX, ii.

234 PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION

In what then does this unity of the group con-

sist? The metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas give

us light on this subtle question. After having

shown why the individual must become a member

of a family and of a civic community, he writes:

"Now we ought to know that this totality, of the

civil or the domestic group, possesses only the unity

of (external) order, and consequently it is not en-

dowed with the unity that belongs to a natural sub-

stance. This is the reason why a portion of this

totahty can carry on activities which are not the

act of the group. A soldier, for example, carries

out actions which do not belong to the army; but

such actions of the soldier do not prevent the group

from carrying on its activities, — activities which

do not belong to each part but to the whole. Thus,

a battle is the activity of the whole army ; the tow-

ing of a barge is the activity of the totality of the

men who pull on the rope.""

There is then a profound difference between the

17 "Sciendum est autem quod hoc totum, quod est civilis multitude

vel domesticia familia, habet solam unitatem ordinis, secundiun quam

non est aliquid simpliciter unum. Et ideo pars ejus totius potest

habere operationem quae non est operatio totius, sicut miles in exer-

citu habet operationem quae non est totius exercitus. Habet nihil-

ominus et ipsum totum aliquam operationem, quae non est propria

alicujus partium, puta conflictus totius exercitus. Et tractus navis

est operatio multitude trahentium navem." In Ethic. Nicom., L. I.

I understand "unitas ordinu' to mean the unity resulting from a

combination of independent beings, realizing an external order, as dis-

tinguished from the jjhysical unity which results from internal order,

in a being where there is a plurality of elements.