The fact of living in a society, highly organised although it be, does not diminish at all the moral significance of personality. Rights and duties belong essentially to persons and to them only. We must beware of the political philosophy which regards the citizens as existing only for the state. Rather the state exists, or should exist, for the welfare of the citizens. In the past this was a grave defect of military despotisms, and was well illustrated by the view of the state taken, or rather inculcated, by German political philosophy. In the future the danger of the violation of personality may lie, Renouvier thinks, in another direction—namely, in the establishment of Communistic states. The basic principle of his ethic is the person as an end in himself, and the treatment of persons as ends. If this be so, a Communistic Republic which has as its motto “Each for all,” without also “All for each,” may gravely violate personality and the moral law if, by constraint, it treats all its citizens and their efforts not as ends in themselves, but merely means to the collective ends of all. The moral ideal demands that personality must not be obliterated. Personality bound up with “autonomy of reason” is the fundamental ethical fact.[25] In the last resort, responsibility rests upon the individuals of the society for the evils of the system of social organisation under which they live. The state itself cannot be regarded as a moral person. Renouvier opposes strongly any doctrine which tends to the personalisation or the deification of the state. [25] Note that Renouvier prefers this term to Kant’s “autonomy of will,” which he thinks confuses moral obligation and free-will. He combats also the modern doctrines of “nationality,” and claims that even the idea of the state is a higher one, for it at any rate involves co-operating personalities, while a nation is a fiction, of which no satisfactory definition can be given. He laughs at the “unity of language, race, culture and religion,” and asks where we can find a nation?[26] War and death have long since destroyed such united and harmonious groups as were found in ancient times. [27] _Science de la Morale_, vol. 2, chap. xcvi, “_Idées de la Nationalité et d’Etat_,” pp. 416-427.