§2. The State. The most comprehensive of all moral institutions is the state. At different times and in different countries the state has been defined in very different ways. It has been taken to mean the monarch who is the actual embodiment of the power of the state, and in whose name all laws are passed and all justice administered. "L'État c'est moi." The state is also sometimes understood to mean the executive body of ministers (e.g. "the Cabinet"), or the particular party in power (e.g. "the Liberals"), or the gathering of representatives of the people (e.g. "Parliament"). But when we speak of the state as a moral institution, we are interpreting it in a much wider sense than that. By a state we mean, an organised community of people, in which each member performs his function, exercising wisely the powers with which he is invested, and giving willing obedience to those who are set over him.
Very different views have been taken of the proper relation of the state to its individual citizens. In our own day two main views frequently come into conflict. On the one hand an extreme individualism is asserted, on the other hand is preached an extreme socialism. On the one hand there is an insistence on the rights of the individual, on the other the rights of the state are emphasised. The settlement of the controversy between socialism and individualism is one of the gravest and most pressing moral tasks which face the twentieth century. If we are to suggest lines on which the opposition between socialism and individualism may be broken down, and are to have a true conception of the proper and fruitful relations of state and citizen, we must
