broken, there is an increase in the assumption and domination of sects and parties, and the individual personality is weakened as the people become entangled and trammeled and ridden by them. The tyranny of opinion is stronger in the decadence of law and freedom. The moral energy and vigor of the people is sapped. The armies are no longer armies of men, but masses moving mechanically, as if impelled by some power external to themselves. They become converted into the passive instruments of an imperial force.

It is in the law of a moral unity-the unity in which the realization of personality subsists — that the foundation of the unity and continuity of the nation is laid. It is the law which has its highest manifestation in sacrifice. It consists with the consciousness of the vocation of the nation, as the fulfillment of humanity in God. A historian of the state, as he presents, in the exclusion of all theories, the facts of history, says,1 "The glory and honor of the nation have always elevated the hearts of its children, and inspired them with sacrifice. For the being, the freedom, and the rights of the nation, the noblest and the worthiest have always offered their lives and their all. The whole great thought of the Fatherland, and the love of its children to it, would be inconceivable, if this moral personality did not belong to the nation."

But as there is in the moral unity which is manifest in sacrifice, the recognition of the moral being of the nation, there is in it also, the preclusion of the postulate and induction of individualism. It can find no reconciliation with the assumption that the nation exists only for the institution and protection of private interests, and the furtherance of private ends. The unity which subsists with the sacrifice of the individual for the nation, as it is formed in the manifestation of the law of the highest moral unity in the life of humanity, can proceed only in the conception of

1 Bluntschli's Allgemeines Statsrechts, vol. i. p. 40.

the being of the nation as a moral person. It cannot consist with a mere individualism in its principle or result; and it is abhorrent that the sacrifice of those who had the higher moral spirit-the worthier going forth in their prime with joy and trust- should be counted only to serve the private and special ends of the individual, and to secure or promote their pleasure or possession; and when the names and sacrifice of these are kept in the memory of the people, it is abhorrent that any should regard the nation as existent only to subserve their private and special interests and ends. But this is the necessary assumption of individualism.

It is because there is an inner moral unity in the nation that the higher realization of personality consists with it. The ideal state of Plato regarded the freedom and personality of the individual with dread, and found no place for it; but in the realization of the nation it becomes the element of its strength. It is as the temple whose building is of living stones. The very substance of the nation is in identity with the realization of personality; but this can be conceived only as the nation is a moral person. It is thus in its history, that those in whom there is the higher realization of personality testify in themselves to the higher realization of the nation. The will that strives for the prevalence of righteousness on the earth, in obedience to the divine Will; the spirit that communes with the inner voice to follow the divine Word; as there is in these the source of the personality and freedom of man. so there has been in these, also, the building of the nation. The historical forces, with which no others may be compared, in their influence upon the people, have been the Puritan and the Quaker. The strength of the one was in the confession of an invisible presence, a righteous and eternal Will which would establish righteousness on the earth, and thence arose the conviction of a direct personal responsibility which could be tempted by no external

splendor, and could be shaken by no external agitation, and could not be evaded or transferred; the strength of the other was the witness in the human spirit to an eternal Word,—an inner voice which spoke to each alone, while yet it spoke to every man; a light which each was to follow, which yet was the light of the world; and all other voices were silent before this, and the solitary path whither it led was more sacred than the worn ways of cathedral aisles. There was in this the foundation of the personality of each, and the secret of the power in which they have wrought upon the nation.

Fifthly, The conception which defines either the nation or the individual as subordinate and secondary, is in its error the postulate of an inevitable antagonism. If either be held not as an end in itself, but only as a means having the other for an end, there can be no principle of unity and no form of reconciliation; there can only result the negation of the one by the other. Society, then, in its irregular course, moving from one contradiction to another, sweeps through the extremes of socialism and individualism. It alternates between a communism, in which there is the destruction of the individual, and an imperialism, in which as in anarchy there is the exaltation of the individual. There is in each of these phases of discordant action, the contradiction to the nation as an ethical organism, the subversion of the organic and moral being of the people. The result in each is the decay of public spirit, which is the reflection of the moral aim of the people, and the loss of even the conception of public duties. Thus in an individualism, - where society is apprehended as having its origin in the volition of the individual, and its continuance subject to his option, and government is only the temporary agency of certain individuals, its right only the combination of private rights, its will only the momentary choice of private persons, its end only the furtherance of private ends; and in socialism, where the

individual is apprehended as subordinate, and is related to the government only as its subject, and in himself and his services is held as if owned by the state, there is in the principle and result the comprehension only of private capacities and private obligations, and in each there is no foundation for public duties and public rights. Their conception is apparently preserved in the latter assumption, but in it, the necessary rights of the state itself can only be apprehended as private rights, and in relation to the individual the state is only a private person.

There is wanting also in the artificial conception of the state, that is, its conception as only a formal sequence or order, the necessary condition of the individual development. It is, necessarily restrictive of the individual. This has been conceded in the induction from the theory itself. Those who have assumed the origin of the state in a compact, have regarded its existence as the necessary and formal limitation of the individual, and therefore it has been assumed that the individual surrendered a part of his actual freedom and actual rights on his entrance into it, and in so far suffered the deprivation of them.

The organization of a merely formal association, as the organization of a sect or a party, is necessarily restrictive of the individual; but it is not thus in an organization formed in an organic life, and as freedom has no formal ground, it cannot subsist in a merely formal association, and it is only as the nation is an organic and moral person that freedom is realized in it, and that the freedom of the individual may be wrought in and with it, in its normal development.1

Sixthly, The nation is to institute and maintain for the individual the sphere of an individual development in its external conditions. It is to enable each to bring all that is in the type of his individuality to its fresh and free expression. There is to be room for each that he may do

1 See Bluntschli's Geschichte des Staatsrechts, etc., p. 622.

all that is in him to do, so that if there be failure in any attainment it is in the homely phrase, because it was not in him. The state by no enactment is to thwart or restrict the working out of the individuality of each in its own type. It is not to hamper or debar any in the creative use of the talents given to him, but in its external conditions is to guard them against let or hindrance. The individuality of each is to be so left, that each may work after his own idea, as all that is alien to this must necessarily be rejected as abstract or evil.

This is the condition of the moral life, and its real achievement. In this alone, as the individual works freely and steadily in it, is the only sureness of strength and repose of character. It is in this that the manifold riches of life, more varied and opulent than in the process of the physical world, are wrought. There is thus to be open to each, the expression of his own conceit, his own disposition of things, his own fancy alike in the work and play of life. There is to be also the freedom of work, and freedom of thought in every form, in theology, in politics, in science, and freedom of study and research, and freedom of communication and association, and freedom of coöperation in industry and economy. There is to be freedom of action, the choice of a home, the choice of a vocation, the choice of a wife. This freedom in every field is the condition of moral strength. In it the bondage of the animal is overcome, and "the ape and tiger die."

The higher individuality is always advancing toward the universal, as universality is a necessary element in personality. Thus the mere eccentricity of style, the singularity of manner or oddity of action which do not belong to individuality, tend to disappear, as all mere mannerism ceases in the work of the greater artist.

In the necessary conception of a moral organism, the nation is to regard the individual as in himself a whole, and its aim is to be, that his powers shall have a devel