Thus, with equal truth and equal error, men have first affirmed and then denied the identity of interest between labour and capital, between consumer and producer. Because this essentially peaceful and common interest underlies the structure of economic competition, it can be approved and secured by law. But the organization of men under law is not simply aimed to preserve the truce from uncertainty and violence, necessary if peaceful labour is to prosper. It endeavours equally to find room for those other forms of association which are not based exclusively on exchange of service, nor aimed entirely at the accumulation of personal enjoyments. These subordinate forms of society in turn are not merely the flower of peace and culture: they exist in some measure as soon as human society itself, and they modify the whole bearing of the most 'individualist' forms of economic association. The family is not only the first forcingground of loyalty and self-sacrifice: it is equally the real unit in most economic life. The association of labourers in guilds or unions primarily, as it seems, to secure them better terms in the rigorous bargaining of the forum turns of its own accord into a society of artists or a group of friends. The State itself takes on a new colouring from the nature of these smaller groups which it comprises: it is regarded now as an economic unit, now merely as a sort of parasite, now as an economic organization, now as a society for moral ends almost comparable with a Church of united worshippers.1 So the various forms of social life sketched above interfuse

1 To the modern protectionist, for example, the State seems to be primarily a force contending for economic gain in a world market: to Karl Marx and his followers the State is the political disguise of certain economic forces: to Hegel it is God moving in the world'.

with one another and change their texture and colouring in the new groupings thus formed.

Now the State is a term sometimes used quite vaguely to denote society in general, sometimes more narrowly to denote a special organization of men governed by the same laws, and obedient to the same legislative assembly. Its precise definition may be a question largely for lawyers interested in the theory of sovereignty, and for the sake of legal precision fully prepared to sacrifice all depth of view. But though the niceties of legal definition need not trouble us, the State not only suggests, but ought to suggest a definite kind of grouping controlled by a determinate Sovereign. When it is used, as it ought to be, with this comparatively precise and restricted meaning, it ceases to be true that the good man and the good citizen are merely identical: though it will not at all follow that goodness in that case becomes something non-social. For there are other forms of Society besides the State, and the State is of importance rather as making them possible, or as adjusting their relations, than as a superior form of organization to which they must all give way. When Aristotle wrote his most quoted sentence and called mankind φύσει πολιτικὸν ζῷον the real sense of his remark was not merely that man must live in society, that the State is necessary for his very nature to express itself, but in far greater precision that man was a creature born for the City State. It was implied that the City State offered a form of association superior to all others in the cultivation of goodness. He will not, indeed, go so far as his master in the suppression even of family ties in the interest of the Tóλis. But by implication he puts it above every other social unit, and the highest type of excellence in practical life for him is the

statesman who guides the destinies of his city and is rewarded by Honour and Power, the two proper objects of high-minded ambition.1

VI

THE EXALTATION OF

THE STATE

§ 1. Introduction

THIS exaltation of the State deserves further consideration. When we give the State in this way. a definite and restricted meaning, it is by no means clear that it stands out as the supreme form of human organization. The State then means above all the Sovereign Legislature. The Law keeps, as we have seen, a sort of censorship over the other forms of society. It secures peace for them all. It tries to regulate the market so as to obtain more effectively the object for which the market exists. By punishing breaches of family life it would help the family to realize the moral excellences for which it stands. It opens the way for the societies of art, learning, and science. It endows or supports and protects the societies of religion. But though it thus comprises the other forms of society within itself, and does something to reconcile the lesser societies' various claims, differences between the State and the lesser societies are still valid. The good father may ipso facto render a service to the State. But there

1 See the account (in Book IV of the Ethics) of μeyaλofvxía, which is the crown of all the virtues of conduct (kóσμos тŵv åpetŵv).

are particular civic duties he may possess as voter, representative or soldier that are not thereby discharged. The special duties owed to the State as a whole are part of the programme which any good man would have to put before himself. But they do not by any means exhaust it, nor are they the most important items in it. Now nothing but misfortune has arisen in political theory from the attempts to ignore or suppress the other forms of society in the interests of the State: an attempt comparable to destroying a picture for the sake of the frame.1 Whether personality in certain directions can transcend society altogether is another question: but at least we must plainly distinguish between society and the State, and admit that political duties proper may be of little importance compared with others which, though non-political, are certainly social. To make this more explicit let us now discuss in more detail some of the attempts to lift the State high above all other forms of society. The result may be to admit that freedom is realized in society-indeed the whole discussion tends towards that conclusion. But society is no more to be identified merely with the modern national State than it was with the Greek módis.

§ 2.

The State and Subordinate Bodies

THE discussions in Greek theory about the place of the family are still instructive from this point of view. Impressed by the conflict between public and private interests, and the decrease of public spirit in the factionridden cities of his time, Plato proposed schemes for

1 Since writing the above paragraphs I find the same view stated in an article by Mr. A. D. Lindsay called 'The State in Recent Political Theory'. I cannot assent to every detail of it, but fully agree that

developing public spirit by the simple expedient of denying any room to petty aims and small attachments. His guardians, unable to express their tastes in art or luxury, are bound to spend their powers in the search of knowledge, and in the public service, and that it shall really be the service of the State is secured by abolishing the chief of the smaller corporate units within it. But to the abolition of the family the objection made by common sense and Aristotle has never been answered. Merely by destroying the narrower channels down which love and loyalty might flow, you do not secure that they shall find their way in the greater passages of the State service. With its bed you destroy the stream. It is impossible that men shall feel to their fellow-citizens generally the same, warm attachment they felt to their wives and children, and the only result of forcibly widening the range of altruistic motives is to diminish their intensity.

It may be doubted indeed whether, if Plato wished to substitute loyalty to the City for all other loyalties, he went quite far enough. Unencumbered by ties of family, or the cares of property, his guardians must yet have felt themselves far more intimately linked to one another than to the City taken as a whole. Solidarity of feeling within the group must have made its appearance here too, and, indeed, with double ease: for the guardians not only shared in specific professional duties, but, more important still, in a peculiar type of education and training. Now among the subordinate societies within the State, none are more important than the formal or

Any theories which ignore the fact that man's social nature expresses itself in many forms ignore the chief problem of politics', Political Quarterly, i. 132.

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