Personality And The Ideal Of The People's State

IF THE principal duty of the National Socialist People’s State is to educate and promote the existence of its people, then it should

• promote those racial elements
• educate them and finally train them for practical life
• adapt its own government to meet the demands of this task.

The Marxist principle is that all men are equal.

It would be absurd to be racist and at the same time make war against such a Marxist principle without knowing the consequences of our racist principle.

I must estimate the worth of nations and individuals differently, based on their races.

No one brain is equal to another. This is because the constituent elements belonging to the same blood vary in a thousand subtle details, though they are fundamentally of the same quality.

The first consequence is that the people in the folk-community who show the best racial qualities should be encouraged more than the others and especially they should be encouraged to increase and multiply.

This task is comparatively simple because it can be recognized and carried out almost mechanically.

It is much more difficult to select from among a whole multitude of people all those who actually possess the highest intellectual and spiritual characteristics and assign them to that sphere of influence which not only corresponds to their outstanding talents but in which their activities will above all things be of benefit to the nation.

This selection according to capacity and efficiency cannot be effected in a mechanical way. It is a work which can be accomplished only through the permanent struggle of everyday life itself.

A WELTANSCHAUUNG which repudiates the democratic principle of the rule of the masses and aims at giving this world to the best people–that is, to the highest quality of mankind–must also apply that same aristocratic postulate to the individuals within the folk-community.

It must take care that the positions of leadership and highest influence are given to the best men. Hence it is not based on the idea of the majority, but on that of personality.

Some people believe that the People’s National Socialist State should distinguish itself from the other States only mechanically.

For example, through a better economic life through:

• a better equilibrium between poverty and riches, or
• the extension to broader masses of the power to determine the economic process
• a fairer wage
• the elimination of vast differences in the scale of salaries

But anyone who thinks this:

• understands only the superficial features of our movement
• has not the least idea of what WELTANSCHAUUNG means.

The whole effect of such measures would be limited to externals.

They would not furnish the nation with that moral armament which alone will enable it effectively to overcome the weaknesses from which we are suffering today.

Cultural Evolution

In order to elucidate this point of view it may be worth while to glance once again at the real origins and causes of the cultural evolution of mankind. The first step which visibly brought mankind away from the animal world was that which led to the first invention.

The invention itself owes its origin to the ruses and stratagems which man employed to assist him in the struggle with other creatures for his existence and often to provide him with the only means he could adopt to achieve success in the struggle.

Those first very crude inventions cannot be attributed to the individual; for the subsequent observer, that is to say the modern observer, recognizes them only as collective phenomena. Certain tricks and skilful tactics which can be observed in use among the animals strike the eye of the observer as established facts which may be seen everywhere; and man is no longer in a position to discover or explain their primary cause and so he contents himself with calling such phenomena ‘instinctive.’

In our case this term has no meaning. Because everyone who believes in the higher evolution of living organisms must admit that every manifestation of the vital urge and struggle to live must have had a definite beginning in time and that one subject alone must have manifested it for the first time.

It was then repeated again and again; and the practice of it spread over a widening area, until finally it passed into the subconscience of every member of the species, where it manifested itself as ‘instinct.’

This is more easily understood and more easy to believe in the case of man. His first skilled tactics in the struggle with the rest of the animals undoubtedly originated in his management of creatures which possessed special capabilities.

There can be no doubt that personality was then the sole factor in all decisions and achievements, which were afterwards taken over by the whole of humanity as a matter of course.

An exact exemplification of this may be found in those fundamental military principles which have now become the basis of all strategy in war. Originally they sprang from the brain of a single individual and in the course of many years, maybe even thousands of years, they were accepted all round as a matter of course and this gained universal validity.

Man completed his first discovery by making a second. Among other things he learned how to master other living beings and make them serve him in his struggle for existence. And thus began the real inventive activity of mankind, as it is now visible before our eyes.

Those material inventions, beginning with the use of stones as weapons, which led to the domestication of animals, the production of fire by artificial means, down to the marvellous inventions of our own days, show clearly that an individual was the originator in each case. The nearer we come to our own time and the more important and revolutionary the inventions become, the more clearly do we recognize the truth of that statement.

All the material inventions which we see around us have been produced by the creative powers and capabilities of individuals. And all these inventions help man to raise himself higher and higher above the animal world and to separate himself from that world in an absolutely definite way. Hence they serve to elevate the human species and continually to promote its progress.

What the most primitive artifice once did for man in his struggle for existence, as he went hunting through the primeval forest, that same sort of assistance is rendered him to-day in the form of marvellous scientific inventions which help him in the present day struggle for life and to forge weapons for future struggles.

In their final consequences all human thought and invention help man in his life-struggle on this planet, even though the socalled practical utility of an invention, a discovery or a profound scientific theory, may not be evident at first sight.

Everything contributes to raise man higher and higher above the level of all the other creatures that surround him, thereby strengthening and consolidating his position; so that he develops more and more in every direction as the ruling being on this earth.

Hence all inventions are the result of the creative faculty of the individual. And all such individuals, whether they have willed it or not, are the benefactors of mankind, both great and small. Through their work millions and indeed billions of human beings have been provided with means and resources which facilitate their struggle for existence.

Thus at the origin of the material civilization which flourishes to-day we always see individual persons. They supplement one another and one of them bases his work on that of the other.

The same is true in regard to the practical application of those inventions and discoveries. For all the various methods of production are in their turn inventions also and consequently dependent on the creative faculty of the individual.

Even the purely theoretical work, which cannot be measured by a definite rule and is preliminary to all subsequent technical discoveries, is exclusively the product of the individual brain. The broad masses do not invent, nor does the majority organize or think; but always and in every case the individual man, the person.

Accordingly a human community is well organized only when it facilitates to the highest possible degree individual creative forces and utilizes their work for the benefit of the community.

The most valuable factor of an invention, whether it be in the world of material realities or in the world of abstract ideas, is the personality of the inventor himself.