PERSONALITY AND THE CONCEPTION OF THE
NATIONAL STATE IT would be folly to expect to measure a man’s worth by the race he belongs to and at the same time to declare war on the Marxist axiom, “One man is the same as any other”, unless we were prepared to pursue it to its final consequences.
Anyone who believes to-day that a national Nationalist-Socialist State should, by purely mechanical means and better construction of its economic life, make itself different from other States, i.e., by a better compromise between riches and poverty or by broaden¬ ing the control of the economic process or by fairer recompense, by doing away with too great differences in wages, will find himself in an absolute impasse; he has not the slightest conception of what we mean by a world-view. The methods described above offer no hope of permanency ; still less do they promise a great future. A nation which puts trust in reforms so super¬ ficial will obtain no guarantee whatever of victory in the general struggle of nations. A Movement which founds its mission on such compromises as these will, in truth, introduce no great reforms, real because farreaching, because its action will never touch anything but the surface of things.
The first step which visibly drew mankind away from the animal world was that which led towards invention. Man’s first skilled measures in the struggle with the rest of the animals were in their origin, undoubtedly, his management of creatures which had special capabilities. Even then, personality was clearly that which produced decisions and achievements, which were later on accepted by the whole of humanity as a matter of course. A man’s knowledge of his own powers, which I consider even