important.

Further, since the State is the ultimate court of appeal, the ultimate protector of the authority reigning in these subordinate bodies themselves, since the authority of the Sword is in modern times granted to no other power but the State itself, it is here that the difficulty of the recalcitrant individual makes itself felt. Men have asked 'Why obey the law?' when they would never have dreamt of asking 'Why earn your living?' 'Why honour your parents?' or 'Why dine with your friends?' The State has seemed to require a justification not necessary for social life generally, simply because the State's sovereignty shows most clearly the control society may or must exercise over its members. To the views expressed on the foregoing pages the problem of the State's authority may seem to present peculiar difficulty. For we have built up society round the individual: we have found in social life something essential for the individual's development, but nothing greater and nobler than his own personality. Admitting then the moral need of society in general, and the State in particular, does it not still remain true that men ought to be left to choose for themselves to what sort of society they shall mould their capacities, whether they shall accept or repudiate its traditions? The value of free choice I do not contest. Nor am I prepared simply to identify free choice and rational choice. Even if the identification be made, it is by no means clear that legal compulsion willforce man to be free': it might produce merely action that was outwardly just and virtuous, but since it was not prompted by a rational conviction of duty, could not even on this amended definition be called free. But there is no escape from the traditional argument that freedom could not be reasonably granted to A, if that

meant a greater infringement of freedom in B, C and D. Now if B, C and D wish to live under a regime where private property is respected and A does not, you cannot permit A to live as he likes without frustrating the aspirations of B, C, D, whose goods he commandeers at his discretion. The example is not intended to suggest that the numbers of its believers prove the truth of a doctrine. Ultimately the justification of any law could only be the happiness and goodness of personal life secured through it so far as this has to be attained through the repression of some individual wills, that is a real misfortune; for spontaneous choice is a necessary element in human excellence, and to curb it is not by any means the same as to guide it into right channels. It is better to admit this misfortune, and to defend the repressive force of law as a necessary evil, than to attempt a proof that the repression is not real. A proof of this kind has sometimes been sought in the famous theory of a General Will. I shall refer to this more at length because it appears to suggest what this essay has denied, that there is a higher 'moral unit' than the individual person. It has been supposed that it proves the authority of the law, and rids it of its repressive character when it can truly be shown that law rests on the General Will. To the further question when such proof is possible the authorities return ambiguous or conflicting answers. Rousseau would say 'only in a General Assembly of the Whole People' but he would soon have to add 'And not even then'. Hegel would say, perhaps, 'Always': but only in the same sense that the State is always' der Gang Gottes in der Welt'. The General Will in Hegel is in

:

1 For it is a transparent fiction that in such an assembly private interests will cancel one another out, and the General Will alone remain.

fact general, only because it sets itself to secure the general good. As Hegel believed law and social institutions necessary for that end he could talk of them as embodying the general will. But it need not follow that a majority of the citizens consciously accept the law and approve it: on the other hand, Hegel loves to contrast the permanent worth of the institutions in which the objective laws of morality find their outward expression, with the mere subjective and capricious opinion of this or that thinker. One of his followers, Professor Bosanquet, interprets the doctrine in more psychological detail. He assures us that the Real Will in every person is in favour of goodness, society, and law: if he must sometimes be forced to be free, still the important thing is that in the long run he is free and not forced. Such arguments at times appear to prove by something like verbal jugglery that men 'really' will what actually they do not will at all. Two assumptions are made : first that individuals' really' will the good, and therefore some organized form of society, and therefore the laws under which it is organized: secondly, that Law is 'really' good too, though some particular laws may be mistaken. In both ways the test of reality seems to be goodness: and I cannot see that such a criterion can be applied here or anywhere else in metaphysical discussion: whatever else may be said of evil, it cannot properly be called unreal. It is true, no doubt, that men always desire some sort of social life. Yet to insist on this when a rebellion is contemplated, would not make it the less true that this present form is not desired. In the interests of law

1 This, too, comes from Hegel. Consider e. g. the following sentence from his discussion of punishment: "Es ist ebensowohl die Natur des Verbrechens wie der eigene Wille des Verbrechers dass die von ihm ausgehende Verletzung aufgehoben werde.” (Rechtsphilosophie, p. 310.)

generally it may be right to acquiesce sometimes in laws which in themselves are not desirable: but the repressive force of the hated measures does not thereby lose its bitterness. Far better to admit coercion to be a real fact, and to justify it as necessary in the interests of government, while government is necessary in the interests of goodness: if in any case this ceases to be true, the obligation to obey is shaken, though at what point actual rebellion becomes expedient and right is a question of infinite and arduous detail. To assert that the law of a State represents the prevalent, underlying will of its members against this or that caprice and revolt is largely true. But the conflict between rebel and sovereign is an indisputable fact: and the General Will is only a fiction if it pretends either that human wills are really unanimous or that in Society there may be found a will higher than any individual's.

2. Its Place in the Future

THUS the State's special task to control, to co-ordinate, where necessary to coerce, does, indeed, elevate it in one way above all other forms of society, even those we described as morally the highest. It represents wider interests than any of the smaller organizations. But it may well be asked 'is not some greater organization than the State as we know it desirable to represent further the common interests of humanity?' For any State comprises only a small section of humanity, and if we could talk of the universal society of men, our modern States would only be subordinate organizations within it, like the lesser societies that grow up in such a State itself. They would then become more like the family or the guild, social institutions with a specific character of

their own through which they could command the loyalty of their members and create a peculiar fellowship of feeling between them.

Indeed, something of this kind is already familiar. Patriotism is not comparable as an efficient motive with family affection or friendship. But, at rare moments it sweeps men away in united movements with a violence that even the more intimate loves or hates of men hardly equal. These moments, it must frankly be admitted, appear most easily when one State is in conflict or danger of conflict with another. The mutual repulsion of group and group noticed in the smaller societies here gathers in ferocity, and for an obvious reason. Over the smaller societies stands the armed might of the State, their arbitrator: over the hostile States of Europe no such arbitrator exists. Thus so far as the State has, so to speak, a self-conscious life, it is because of its defects. It is there to control and co-ordinate: but from another point of view it is itself a unit needing co-ordination, and finding none except through the rough mediation of the sword. Of the various forms of social life we have studied, the State therefore becomes the least satisfactory, the least necessary it might even seem. These isolated seats of sovereignty must surely disappear, it might be urged, and leave to a World State the necessary power to weld into a coherent and stable whole the multitude of small social organisms which man's need of his fellows amid all his diverse activities will surely create. This World State too, we might dream, will hardly be a legislative power as our States are. It is conceivable only when the mere work of satisfying material wants is easily satisfied, and there are no pressing needs for expansion nor any great lust for material riches. It would represent