lives, has certain inalienable rights, it might be held that the state is the source, the basis, and the regulator of every human liberty. The theory of natural rights or extra-state rights was no doubt a useful expedient in the eighteenth century, when the state was one, or a few persons who often acted in defiance of universal moral sentiment; but now that the state is the people in ultimate organization, even the utility of the doctrine is obsolete. Its logical outcome would be anarchy; for if the state does not mark out and protect the spheres of individual autonomy, each citizen must do it for himself. Nor would Mr. Spencer's supreme law of equal freedom be much of a control. It would justify, it seems to me, a right of retaliation, a right of compensatory theft, a right of reciprocal adultery, etc. It is true that "the intention of the formula is to fix a bound which may not be exceeded on either side" (pp. 46-7, cf. p. 115); but I fail to see how this intention can be realized save through the principle of the well-being of the community. The state, I should say, respects, protects, and checks the individual's impulse to act freely for the sake of the highest welfare of the society, and in conformity with its requirements. Under this supreme principle there has grown up, in the progress of civilization, a realm of individual liberty which is almost the same in every state of modern Christendom. This practical identity of individual rights and immunities within different states has led Mr. Spencer to the supposition that they are prior to the state and deducible by a priori methods of reasoning.
There is not space to speak at length of Mr. Spencer's doctrine of the functions of the state. It is of a piece with his theory of individual rights; and both doctrines proceed from the conception of man as naturally ἄπολις — a self-sufficient unit not adapted to political communion. To such a natural man it involves some sacrifice to be a member of a state; hence the functions of the government should be reduced to a minimum — to the single business of protecting the citizens. A different result, however, emerges if we adopt the Aristotelian, which is surely the correct, view of man as a being made and intended for the state. The state would then appear, not as a conventional, but a natural institution, in, and through which alone, man can lead a truly human life. It was no doubt formed for the protection of life; but, as Aristotle said, it exists for the improvement of life. Were there a world-state, its end would be the development and perfection of the life of mankind. It was this ultimate goal that Hegel probably had in mind when he defined morality and civilization — Sittlichkeit — as the end of the state. But the national state is the highest political community that has yet been reached. Its end is the development and perfection of the national genius and character. The means by which it accomplishes this end are liberty and government, which form, therefore, the proxi-
