Within its own territory the duty of the State is, then, to maintain a system of rights and to use the collective resources of the community for the promotion of the good life of its members in accordance with the principles of justice or the rule of equality. But this rule is of universal applicability, and justice enjoins the promotion of the good wherever possible. In so far as the State is concerned, how ever, it is seen that it is limited by the nature of the means at its disposal and, obviously, by the amount of obedience and willing support it can get from its members. It is clear that its first duty is to promote the good of its own members, not because no one else has a claim, or that the good of others is less important, but because of the greater probability of its being able to secure the conditions required for this realization of the good of its own members than that of others of whose requirements it can have no intimate knowledge, and over whose resources it has no effective control. One may go further and say that, in general, it is dan gerous for States to seek to promote the good of others, though it has not been uncommon for civilized States to justify their claims to govern the "uncivilized," on the ground that their suzerainty is for the good of the latter. It is odd that those who have maintained that "there is no recognized moral order," to guide States in their relations with one another, have not felt the difficulty of the appeal to moral considerations so often made by white peoples in their dealings with other races. If each State is the guardian of a moral world but not a factor within an organized world there could never be any justification for any attempt to impose the criteria of one "moral world" on any other "moral world." In opposition to such views it must be urged with the ut most emphasis that moral principles are universal, though their application to the problem of international regulation may present greater difficulties than that with which an individual is confronted in cases of perplexities of conscience. The greater relative diffi
culty, however, arises not from the absence of principles but from the complexity and intricacy of the problems to which they have to be applied. The principles themselves, though they may not as yet be recognized by the whole of mankind, are binding in the sense that they ought to guide States in their mutual relations. Much has been made in this connection of the difficulty of decid ing where responsibility lies. But this again raises no real problem of principles. Men acting in concert do not on that account lose their responsibility, though the precise incidence of responsibility in group action may vary according to the nature of the group, the genuineness of the control shared by its members, the degree to which the authority of the leaders and agents is based upon active consultation with the rest of the members, and so forth. The actions of States must be judged by the same principles as those which bind individuals or groups of individuals. The most urgent task of the social philosopher is to apply the universal principles of ethics to the problem of international morality and law.
S. Mackenzie, An Introduction to Social Philos ophy (1895) ; T. H. Green, Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation (1895) ; Bernard Bosanquet, The Philosophical Theory of the State (1920), and Social and International Ideals (5957) ; L. T. Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State (1921) , The Rational Good (1920) , Elements of Social Justice (1922), and Social Development (1924) ; G. E. Moore, Principle Ethica (1903) ; H. J. Laski, A Grammar of Politics (1925) ; R. M. Maclver, The Modern State (1926) ; H. J. W. Hetherington and J. H. Muirhead, Social Purpose: A Contribution to a Philosophy of Civic Society (t918) ; E. J. Urwick, A Philosophy of Social Progress (192o) ; G. D. H. Cole, Social Theory (1920 ; J. M. E. MacTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology (1918) ; John Laird, A Study in Moral Theory (1926) ; A. M. Carr-Saunders, The Population Problem (5922). (M. GO