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jective state objective in institutions and laws is, for the political scientist, a creative process which may properly be termed origination. Man through history has been the sole, immediate force in the accomplishment of this. Our knowledge of the history of the human race does not, indeed, reach back to the beginning of that history. We know nothing of the influences and the conditions under which the human mind first awakened to the consciousness of the state, and felt the impulse to exert itself for the objective realization of that consciousness. We are fully warranted, however, by the status of human society which history first presents us, in concluding that this great light did not come to all at once. The period of barbaric liberty and self-help permits and promotes the development of the few mighty personalities and their elevation to those heights of superiority over their fellows which the dawn of civilization first illumines. These few great personalities form the nuclei of political organization. They are, at first, priests rather than statesmen. They are inspired by the belief that what they behold in themselves is divinity. They so represent it to the masses of the uninitiated. They invent the means to impress this belief upon the masses. They establish a cult, and from behind its power and influence they govern the people. The religious sanction secures obedience to the laws of the state. Religion and law, church and state, are confused and mingled. They are joint forces in the period when the human race emerges from barbarism and enters upon its course of civilization; but the state is enveloped by the church, and exists only by the moral support which it receives from the church. Under this form the people are disciplined and educated. The consciousness of the state spreads wider. Non-priestly personalities begin to be touched by its light. They are forced thereby either to regard themselves as priests, or to reflect that the state, in its subjective character, is not a special revelation of divinity. They either seek entrance into the

ranks of the priesthood or begin to dispute its exclusive political powers. The resistance of the priesthood to these movements provokes the view on the part of the newly enlightened that the existing system is a pious fraud, and incites them to organization about one of their number, as chief, for the purpose of forcing the priesthood to a division of power. The struggle must not be allowed to come to open conflict. The newly initiated must not declare what they have seen to the masses, lest the faith of the masses be shaken and the supports of law and order, of civilization and progress, be destroyed. The two parties must compromise. The priests must divide their powers with the warriors. They must also support the rule of the warriors by the power of religion. The despotism results. In spite of its ugly name, it marks a great step in advance.1 It gives greater exhibition of violence, but, at the core, it is far less despotic than the theocracy. It leaves a larger sphere of individual activity unrestrained. It lightens the spiritual oppression and depression which rest upon the souls of men, subject at every step and turn to the immediate intervention of divine command. is a more human, if not a more humane, system. It tends to prevent the respect and obedience for law developed by the theocracy from becoming too timorous and servile. It raises

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human courage. It opens the way for a more general exer

tion of human reason. It makes it easier for the consciousness of the state to spread to still wider circles, while it holds fast to what has been won in political piety during the preceding era. It prepares the forces for the terrible struggle of the succeeding era, to whose awakening and exciting power we owe the spread of the consciousness of the state to the masses. The conflict in principle between the royal organization and the priesthood becomes irrepressible. The king loses his religious support in the eyes of the

1 Bluntschli, Lehre vom modernen Stat, Bd. I, S. 392.

masses. His official subordinates learn to defy him successfully, and by the help of the priesthood to change their official agencies into more or less independent powers. It is an all-around battle between all the existent directing forces of human society. So far as these forces are concerned, it is not only irrepressible, but interminable. They can never bring peace; at best only armistice. A new and still more controlling force must appear. At last, through the educating power of the terrible antagonism, a large proportion of the population is awakened to the consciousness of the state, and feels the impulse to participate in the work of its objective realization. Animated by patriotism and loyalty, by the sense of human interests and by rationality, they gather about their king, as the best existing nucleus of their power. They give him the strength to overcome both defiant priesthood and rebellious officials. They establish the objective unity of the state. They bring the absolute sovereignty to objective realization. They subject all individuals and all associations of individuals to its sway. Apparently they make the king the state. Really they make him but the first servant of the state. The state is now the people in

sovereign organization. This is an immense advance in the development of the state. It is the beginning of the modern political era. Under its educating influence the consciousness of the state spreads rapidly to the great mass of the population, and the idea of the state becomes completely secularized and popularized. The doctrine that the people in ultimate sovereign organization are the state becomes a formulated principle of the schools and of political science and literature. The jurists, the publicists and the moral philosophers lead in the evolution of the idea. The warriors and the priests are assigned to the second place. The sovereign people turn their attention to the perfecting of their own organization. They lay hands upon the royal power. They strip it of its apparent sovereignty and make it purely

office. If it accommodates itself to the position, it is allowed to exist; if not, it is cast aside. At last the state knows itself and is able to take care of itself. The fictions, the makeshifts, the temporary supports, have done their work, and done it successfully. They are now swept away. The structure stands upon its own foundation. The state, the realization of the universal in man, in sovereign organization over the particular, is at last established, the product of

the progressive revelation of the human reason through history.

Many are the races of men whose powers have been expended in the process of this development. The torch of civilization has been handed from one to another, as each exhausted bearer has ceased to be the representative of the world's progress. Many are the races, also, which still wait to be touched by the dawn of this great light. Of all the races of the world only the Roman and the Teuton have realized the state in its approximately pure and perfect character. From them the propaganda must go out, until the whole human race shall come to the consciousness of itself, shall realize its universal spiritual substance, and subject itself to the universal laws of its rationality.

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This, in many words, is what we mean by the proposition that the state is a product, nay, the product, of history. contains, certainly, a nobler conception of the state in origin, development, and ultimate character, and of the relation of the individual to the state, than does any other doctrine or theory. In its contemplation, men feel the impulse to heroic effort, rejoice in sacrifice, learn to know true liberty and to despise fear. If it makes the state more human, it makes humanity more divine.

CHAPTER III.

THE FORMS OF STATE.

THERE is no topic of political science concerning which a more copious literature is at hand than this. There is none, again, in regard to which a less satisfactory treatment has been attained than this. A careful student of what has been. written upon this subject, both in Europe and America, will, I think, discover that the cause of this unsatisfactory result, upon the part of the European publicists, is the fact that they do not discriminate clearly between state and gov ernment; upon the part of the American writers, that they copy too closely the European authors.

Both of these facts are explicable. In Europe, state and government are actually more or less mingled and commingled. The publicists are confused in their reflections by the confusion in the external object. It will be profitable to dwell upon this point a moment, and inquire how this actual condition of things has come about, which has exercised such a troubling influence upon political science. I think the explanation is to be found in the consequences of the historical development of the state. No great state in Europe, except France, has cut its history into two distinct and separate parts by revolution, and founded its existing institutions directly and consciously upon revolution. We may say then, as the rule, that in the European states the form of state generated in one period of their history laps over upon that developed in the succeeding period or periods. A close scrutiny of this process will disclose the following significant facts, viz; that in the transition from one form of state to another,

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