We have seen that the idea of the nation, present to the minds of the mass of its members, is an essential condition of the nation’s existence in any true sense of the word nation; that the idea alone as an intellectual apprehension cannot exert any large influence; that it determines judgment and action only in virtue of the sentiment which grows up about this object—a sentiment which is transmitted and fostered from generation to generation, just because it renders the nation an object of value. The consideration should be obvious enough; but it has commonly been ignored by philosophers of the intellectualist school. They treat the individual mind as a system of ideas; they ignore the fact that it has a conative side which has its own organisation, partially distinct from, though not independent of, the intellectual side; and consequently they ignore equally the fact that the national mind has its conative organisation. Imagine a people in whom anti-nationalism (in the form of cosmopolitanism, syndicalism or philosophic anarchism) had spread, until this attitude towards the nation-state as such had become adopted by half its members, while the other half remained patriotic. Then there would be acute conflict and discussion, and the idea of the nation would be vividly present to all minds; but the nature of the sentiment attached to it would be different and opposite in the two halves; one of attachment and devotion in the one half; of dislike, aversion, or at least indifference (i.e. lack of sentiment) in the other half. And the efforts of the one half to maintain the nation as a unit would be antagonised and perhaps rendered nugatory by the indifference or opposition of the other half, who would always seek to break down national boundaries and would refuse co-operation in any national action, and who would league themselves with bodies of similar interests and anti-national tendencies in other countries. Then, even though all might be well-meaning people desiring the good of mankind, the nation would be very greatly weakened and probably would soon cease to exist as such. The illustration shews the importance of the distinction which Rousseau did not draw in his discussion of the general will—namely, the distinction between the good of all and the good of the whole, i.e. of the nation as such. It might be argued that the distinction is purely verbal; it might be said that, if you secure the good of all, you thereby _ipso facto_ secure the good of the whole, because the whole consists of the sum of existing individuals; and that this is obvious, because, if you take them away, no whole remains. But to argue thus is to ignore the fact on which we have already insisted—namely, that the whole is much more than the sum of the existing units, because it has an indefinitely long future before it and a part to play, through indefinitely long periods of time, as a factor in the general welfare and progress of mankind.