son of wisdom in her ways. Bees perform now precisely the same complicated and ingenious acts which Virgil described two thousand years ago in in the Georgics. Singly and collectively, they remain as they were at the beginning, while man, singly and collectively, has moved onward and upward. And the reason is that the ant or the bee is a mere Naturwesen, bound fast in fate like nature's other products. Because they lack the endowment of rational will, whereby "man is man, and master of his fate," and the endowment of rational language which is the chief instrument of his volition, they abide for ever in the stationary state of instinct. The society of animals, like the art of animals, tends towards no ideal, because the ideal does not exist for animals. The law of progress, rightly considered, is the irresistible attraction for the human will of good, and specially of that highest good which the Schoolmen termed bonum honestum, ethical good. The root of progress is the distinctively virile quality which the old Romans aptly called virtus: devotion to the true, the just; to the idea of Right which reason reveals. Advance in knowledge of natural law, and in skill in applying it to the arts of life, is no true human progress unless it springs from this root. The real subject of progress is man himself; the real source of progress is in the idea of Right. And in the ever-expanding application of the principles embodying that idea, as it grows in

the public conscience, is the third great distinction marking off the State from the animal commonwealth.

Such, then, are the essential differences between human and animal communities; and they are as patent as are the analogies. Animal communities, in their highest forms, are an expression of instinct. The State, in its lowest form, is an expression of reason a lasting external work in which that distinctive endowment of man is manifested. We will conclude this inquiry into the origin of the State with certain pregnant words of Lasson :

The external ground for the existence of the State is the nature of man. There are no men without continuity of social life (Zusammenleben). There is no continuity of

social life without order. There is no order without law. There is no law without coercive force. There is no coercive force without organization. And this organization is the State. The inner ground for the existence of the State is man's endowment of Reason, which is the most distinctive part of his manhood.'

1 System der Rechtsphilosophie, p. 296.

CHAPTER III

THE

THE OBJECT OF THE STATE

HE next step in our inquiry is, What is the End or Object of the State? And here again we may well follow the guidance of "the master of those who know." "The nature of a thing," according to the Aristotelian dictum, "is its final end" († dè púσis télos éoTív). Yes; the nature of a thing and its final end are, in some sort, identical. If we would know its final end, we must know its nature. What, then, is the nature of the State?

I suppose the conception of the State most current in this country is the purely Utilitarian one which regards it as a fortuitous concourse of men bound by the tie of common advantage; a mere machine, driven by the forces of public and private interest; a sort of huge insurance society, the taxes being the premium. Perhaps no one has done more to diffuse this conception among us than Lord Macaulay. It is the underlying thought of one of the most popu lar-and in many respects justly popular of his writings, his famous essay on Gladstone's Church and State. And so, in accordance with it, he insists that

"the primary end of Government" is "the protection of the persons and property of men." He thinks "that government should be organised solely with a view to [this] main end." He adds "if a government can, without any sacrifice of its main end, promote any other good work-the encouragement of the fine arts, for example-it ought to do so"; while "it is still more evidently the duty of government to promote, always in subordination to its main end, everything which is useful as a means for the attaining of that main end." Is this a sufficient account of the State ?

I venture to say that it is not, any more than the Utilitarian philosophy, upon which it rests, is a sufficient account of man. The protection, not of persons and property, as Macaulay puts it, but of the rights of person and property, which is a very different thing, is, no doubt, the duty of the State. But what is a right? and what is the relation of the State to rights? The answer to these questions may ena ble us to discern the true nature of the State, and to conclude thence to its end.

A right is commonly defined as a moral power residing in a person, in virtue of which he calls any. thing his own. It is, in point of fact, the thing so deeply detested by the whole Utilitarian School, "a metaphysical entity," and cannot possibly be other.

1 Works, vol. vi., p. 372, 373.

And,

This, after all, need excite no surprise; for every problem of thought, if we investigate it closely enough, lands us in metaphysics. "Man," Schopenhauer truly says, "is a metaphysical animal." He ever asks, and cannot keep from asking, Why? The other animals only ask, How? A right arises from the nature of things, according to that excellent saying of Cicero: nos ad justitiam natos; neque opinione, sed natura, constitutum esse jus.1 And so Trendelenburg: "All right, so far as it is right and not unright (Unrecht), issues from the impulse (Trieb) to maintain an ethical existence." therefore, it is only of man that right, in the strict sense-right with its correlative duty-can be predicated; for man alone is an ethical being. I touched upon this matter in the last chapter. proper, in the present connection, to words to what I there said. In all organic being there is an internally directive power which is its chief characteristic. The lower organic natures are blindly and sensuously influenced by that power In the higher organic natures it is rationally and freely exerted; and then we have rights and duties -that is to say, morality. If the moral ideal is considered in its individual character, as independently manifested in the pure will, or as human perfection,

1

It will be add a few

1 De Legibus, l. i. c. 10. I know of nothing better in Cicero's philosophical works than his argument upon this subject. It is just as valid now as when it was written.

? Naturrecht auf dem Grunde der Ethik, p. 46.