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Myth of the State
. A French scholar, E. Doutte, has written a very interesting book Magie et
religion dans VAfrique du Nord. In this book he tries to give a concise and
clear-cut definition of myth. According to Doutte the gods and demons that
we find in primitive societies are nothing but the personifications of
collective wishes. Myth, says Doutte, is "le desir collectif personifie"-
the collective desire personified. This definition was given about thirty-
five years ago. Of course the author did not know and did not think of our
current political problems. He spoke as an anthropologist who was engaged
in a study of the religious ceremonies and the magic rites of some savage
tribes in North Africa. On the other hand this formula of Doutte could be
used as the most laconic and trenchant expression of the modern idea of
leadership or dictatorship. The call for leadership only appears when a
collective desire has reached an overwhelming strength and when, on the
other hand, all hopes of fulfilling this desire, in an ordinary and normal
way, have failed. At these times the desire is hot only keenly felt but
also personified. It stands before the eyes of man in a concrete, plastic,
and individual shape. The intensity of the collective wish is embodied in
the leader. The former social bonds-law, justice, and constitutions-are
declared to be without any value. What alone remains is the mystical power
and authority of the leader and the leader's will is supreme law.
It is, however, clear that the personification of a collective wish cannot
be satisfied in the same way by a great civilized nation as by a savage
tribe. Civilized man is, of course, subject to the most violent passions,
and when these passions reach their culminating point he is liable to yield
to the most irrational impulses. Yet even in this case he cannot entirely
forget or deny the demand of rationality. In order to believe he must find
some "reasons" for his belief; he must form a "theory" to justify his
creeds. And this theory, at least, is not primitive; it is, on the
contrary, highly sophisticated.
We easily understand the assumption in savage life that all human powers
and all natural powers can be condensed and concentrated in an individual
man. The sorcerer, if he is the right man, if he knows the magic spells,
and if he understands how to use them at the right time and in the right
order, is the master of everything. He can avert all evils, he can defeat
every enemy; he commands all natural forces. All this is so far removed
from the modern mind that it seems to be quite unintelligible. Yet, if
modern man no longer believes in a natural magic, he has by no means given
up the belief in a sort of "social magic." If a collective wish is felt in
its whole strength and intensity, people can easily be persuaded that it
only needs the right man to satisfy it. At this point Carlyle's theory of
hero worship made its influence felt. This theory promised a rational
justification for certain conceptions that, in their origin and tendency,
were anything but rational. Carlyle had emphasized that hero worship is a
necessary element in human history. It cannot cease till man himself
ceases. "In all epochs of the world's history, we shall find the Great Man
to have been the indispensable savor of his epoch; the lightning, without
which the fuel never would have burnt." 2 The word of the great man is the
wise healing word which all can believe in.
But Carlyle did not understand his theory as a definite political program.
His was a romantic conception of heroism-far different from that of our
modern political "realists." The modern politicians have had to use much
more drastic means. They had to solve a problem that in many respects
resembles squaring the circle. The historians of human civilization have
told us that mankind in its development had to pass through two different
phases. Man began as homo magus; but from the age of magic he passed to the
age of technics. The homo magus of former times and of primitive
civilization became a homo faber, a craftsman and su> tisan. If we admit
such an historical distinction our modern po-

2. Carlyle, On Heroes, Lect. I, pp. 13 ff. Centenary ed., V, 13.

litical myths appear indeed as a very strange and paradoxical thing. For
what we find in them is the blending of two activities that seem to exclude
each other. The modern politician has had to combine in himself two
entirely different and even incompatible functions. He has to act, at the
same time, as both a homo magus and a homo faber. He is the priest of a
new, entirely irrational and mysterious religion. But when he has to defend
and propagate this religion he proceeds very methodically. Nothing is left
to chance; every step is well prepared and premeditated. It is this strange
combination that is one of the most striking features of our political
myths.
Myth has always been described as the result of an unconscious activity and
as a free product of imagination. But here we find myth made according to
plan. The new political myths do not grow up freely; they are not wild
fruits of an exuberant imagination. They are artificial things fabricated
by very skilful and cunning artisans. It has been reserved for the
twentieth century, our own great technical age, to develop a new technique
of myth. Henceforth myths can be manufactured in the same sense and
according to the same methods as any other modern weapon-as machine guns or
airplanes. That is a new thing-and a thing of crucial importance. It has
changed the whole form of our social life. It was in 1933 that the
political world began to worry somewhat about Germany's rearmament and its
possible international repercussions. As a matter of fact this rearmament
had begun many years before but had passed almost unnoticed. The real
rearmament began with the origin and rise of the political myths. The later
military rearmament was only an accessory after the fact. The fact was an
accomplished fact long before; the military rearmament was only the
necessary consequence of the mental rearmament brought about by the
political myths.
The first step that had to be taken was a change in the function of
language. If we study the development of human speech we find that in the
history of civilization the word fulfils two entirely different functions.
To put it briefly we may term these functions the semantic and the magical
use of the word. Even among the so-called primitive languages the semantic
function of the word is never missing; without it there could be no human
speech. But in primitive societies the magic word has a predominant and
overwhelming influence. It does not describe things or

The Technique of the Modern Political
relations of things; it tries to produce effects and to change the
course of nature. This cannot be done without an elaborate magical art. The
magician, or sorcerer is alone able to govern the magic word. But in his
hands it becomes a most powerful weapon. .Nothing can resist its force.
Carmina vel coelo possunt deducere lunam," says the sorceress Medea in
Ovid's Metamorphoses - by magic songs and incantations even the moon can be
dragged down from the heavens.
Curiously enough all this recurs in our modern world. If we study our
modern political myths and the use that has been made of them we find in
them, to our great surprise, not onlv a trans-valuation of all our ethical
values but also a transformation of human speech. The magic word takes
precedence of the semantic word. If nowadays I happen to read a German
book, published in these last ten years, not a political but a theoretical
book, a work dealing with philosophical, historical, or economic problems
-I find to my amazement that I no longer understand the German language.
New words have been coined; and even the old ones are used in a new sense;
they have undergone a deep change of meaning. This change of meaning
depends upon the fact that those words which formerly were used in a
descriptive, logical, or semantic sense, are now used as magic words that
are destined to produce certain effects and to stir up certain emotions.
Our ordinary words are charged with meanings; but these new-fangled words
are charged with feelings and violent passions.
Not long ago there was published a very interesting little book, Nazi-
Deutsch. A Glossary of Contemporary German Usage. Its authors are Heinz
Paechter, Bertha Hellman, Hedwig Paechter, and Karl O. Paetel. In this book
all those new terms which were produced by the Nazi regime were carefully
listed, and it is a tremendous list. There seem to be only a few words
which have survived the general destruction. The authors made an attempt to
translate the new terms into English, but in this regard they were, to my
mind, unsuccessful. They were able to give only circumlocutions of the
German words and phrases instead of real translations. For unfortunately,
or perhaps fortunately, it was impossible to render these words adequately
in English. What characterizes them is not so much their content and their
objective meaning as the emotional atmosphere which surrounds and envelops
them. This atmosphere must be felt; it cannot be translated nor can it be
transferred from one climate of opinion to an entirely different one. To
illustrate this point I content myself with one striking example chosen at
random. I understand from the Glossary that in recent German usage there
was a sharp difference between the two terms Siegfriede and Siegerfriede.
Even for a German ear it will not be easy to grasp this difference. The two
words sound exactly alike, and seem to denote the same thing. Sieg means
victory, Friede means peace; how can the combination of the two words
produce entirely different meanings? Nevertheless we are told that, in
modern German usage, there is all the difference in the world between the
two terms. For a Siegfriede is a peace through German victory; whereas a
Siegerfriede means the very opposite; it is used to denote a peace which
would be dictated by the allied conquerors. It is the same with other
terms. The men who coined these terms were masters of their art of
political propaganda. They attained their end, the stirring up of violent
political passions, by the simplest means. A word, or even the change of a
syllable in a word, was often good enough to serve this purpose. If we hear
these new words we feel in them the whole gamut of human emotions-of
hatred, anger, fury, haughtiness, contempt, arrogance.