Art. 2.-THE STATE AND MODERN DEMOCRACY. THE natural history of the state has not yet been completely written. Neither has the study of the state's essential functions been put upon a real historical basis, although Professor Oppenheimer a few years ago wrote one or two important chapters of that study. At a time in the history of European civilisation when there is an insistent demand for the intervention of the state in industrial and social affairs, and when half-articulate demands for freedom and justice are made by a partially educated democracy, it is important to know this natural history and to understand what relationships the modern state bears to democracy.

We know fairly well the relationship the state of Athens bore to the Athenian democracy, a democracy limited and direct. The Athenian citizen expressed his individuality either directly in his daily pursuits, or through broad-based and popular institutions like his priesthood, his games and the state. The citizen functioned directly in the public assembly and in other activities, including war and the holding of public offices. It has been maintained with a certain degree of plausibility that the too open nature of Athenian democracy was the cause of her downfall in the long struggle with Sparta. Modern communities are much larger, even as cities apart from their organisation as nations, and this direct participation in public affairs of national character becomes impossible, leading to the representative principle in modern democracies. We are beset on the one hand with the possibilities of an inefficient anarchy where functional organisations are at a discount, and on the other hand with the dead hand of closed bureaucracy, to which the overloading of the state with industrial functions would lead. We have emerged slowly to democracy from a condition of feudalism, the antithesis of democracy, the characteristic of which is to seek the most complete expression of the individual's personality on the widest possible franchise. That wide franchise has to be political, industrial, artistic and moral, and this expression of modern democracy can only be effected through functional organisations, working in those fields of activity, in collaboration with a popularly elected

organisation of true state activities. Democracy is not simply a form of government (such must to a certain extent be bureaucratic), but is an attitude of mind to government and all other forms of human activity which presupposes an active and alert interest in them and a certain jealousy of undue encroachment on private feelings and actions. It also assumes a respect for other personalities and consequently is a disciplined freedom.

Theoretically, no doubt, the modern state should have a close correspondence with modern democracy. But contemporaneous things have seldom the affinities we would expect to find by abstract reasoning. The established state is always a survival from a more remote age from which it claims its sanctions, and recognising this fact we should expect to find, not only faint traces of past functions, but an overwhelming sense of incongruity between the expressions of its power and purpose and the aims of modern democracy. Democracy, as we have come to understand it, is not a survival from the distant past, but in its modern garb it is a new thing in the world; a thing incomplete and partially dressed in the swaddling clothes of ancient shibboleths, and incomplete knowledge of its own purposes and those of the functional institutions which were old and persistent in society when it came to birth.

It may be said that if one institution has been discussed thoroughly, it is that of the state. The complaint is made, indeed, that the state's activities rather than the life of peoples have been the constant theme of historians and political philosophers. The complaint is valid; but we have to realise that it is the histories of established great states which have been narrated, historical states which were taken for granted, and whose fundamental bases have not been explored, but only their juridical and military history, since establishment. There has been little discussion concerning the necessary nature of the state and its functions in society, and little inquiry concerning the origin of the idea of the state, and the development of that idea.

No doubt, states did not come into existence in the first instance as ideas, but were built upon accomplished facts of supremacy. The ruler or tyrant probably preceded any philosophy of the state, and yet the state in

a proper sense could not be said to have existed until the idea of the functions a ruler should perform had been elaborated to a certain degree. In this development of the idea of the state, however, there has been a tendency to discover for it mythical origins on the one hand, and on the other hand a tendency to conduct the inquiry in a spirit of unhistorical rationalism, developing it as a pure abstract idea in vacuo. The latter, indeed, has succeeded in making a bogey of the state, something awe-inspiring and terrible and remote from human feelings. It has conduced very little to the elucidation of the obscurities and difficulties with which the subject is surrounded. People are afraid to inquire into the origins of the state because rationalists have so stressed its juristic aspect as to give it an air of infallibility and omniscience. Humbler people feel that to probe into its natural history and functions is to disturb the very basis of law and order, and to undermine the stability of civilised life. Most histories are written as justifications for the actions of powerful men and bodies quite as much as explanations of the cause of events, even if the bodies justified have a life measured by centuries. The peculiar position held by the state has made it, not only the successful litigant in dispute, but also the judge and jury in its own case as well as the censor of public opinion; so that even contemporary evidence, which might have been unfavourable to its claims in particular instances, is suppressed. Those actions are generally called vindicating justice, which in this sense is always the right of the more powerful.

History is the record of justification for the soldiers, statesmen and lawgivers who have been successful in imposing their will upon peoples. It weighs evidence by the forms of juridical procedure, and is even capable of creating a legal myth to explain and justify oppression. Such legal fictions are the doctrines of 'natural law' and the law of previous accumulation,' fictions designed to justify the harsh property laws of Rome, and the appropriations of the fruits of labour by powerful persons throughout the ages. But although many of the activities of the state are based on legal fictions, that fact does not make the state any the less strong, for a legal fiction as a metaphysic is often beyond the

range of effective and practical criticism, where a statement of fact is open to controversy and different interpretations. The metaphysical idea of the state becomes closely connected with ideas of deity and divine sanctions, and, therefore, deeply embedded in the popular and superstitious mind. There becomes elaborated, in the course of years, a doctrine of rights for the rulers and a ritual of duties for the ruled, which in many cases are inviolate and more sacred than the canon law itself, and stand as criteria for right and wrong actions.

Is the state all that it claims to be-an inviolate god on earth, something beyond question as an idea, and beyond the judgment of the moral code of the society in which it operates, and of which it is by assumption an important functional organ? Is it truly a social institution, or are its activities anti-social and is it therefore a tyranny? Is there a necessary state, as well as an historical state; and if so are they in any way identifiable? Those are some of the questions modern men are called upon to answer, if they are to take right action in their social activities. If, as some believe, there be no necessity for the existence of a state at all, and if the activities of the historical state be anti-social and repressive of the human instinct for freedom and self-expression, it would be our duty to work for its destruction at all costs. If, on the other hand, there be an undeniable necessity for such an organisation as the state, whether or not it be the historical state we know; a necessary state whose true functions have become warped in the practical world, the problem becomes one of readjustment of social functions, a readjustment only possible by a clearer enunciation of principles. It may be that the necessary state and the historical state are identical, and that the state as we know it is a complete reflex of the condition of society at any time and answers perfectly to the needs of that society. This would mean that with the development of society the character of the state would change. With the growth of democracy and the validity of the coöperative principle in place of autocracy and competition, there would grow up a corresponding democratic state; but he would be bold who would say that the great military states of the modern world, as such, have any real correspondence to the democratic

spirit of modern times. The problem, however, is not so simple as it appears, whilst unfortunately the tendency of discussion, particularly on historical topics, is to over-simplification. It is probable that the activities of the state at any moment could be calculated, if we were able to assess at the proper values the stresses of ancient survivals and those due to functional adaptation, along with the secondary stresses of the theorists of all descriptions; for in state activities the influence of the theorist, particularly the legal theorist, is profound. The problem of the relationship of the state to democracy is further complicated by the conceptions we hold of the latter, whether we are satisfied with the political democracy we know to-day, or whether our imagination envisages a more complete functional democracy, where freedom will reside in the practical details of life and work, rather than in the widest political franchise.

It is apparent that not only is there a wide variation of practice concerning state activities, but that there is also a wide variation of theory regarding the work the state should undertake. Unfortunately, in discussing such matters the student is faced with the decrees of bodies which must be authoritative, in some essential matters, if the fabric of civilised society is to remain intact. Many functions are performed to-day by the state and by the analogous corporate bodies of burgh and county, which we would not be prepared to admit to be the proper function of those bodies under any circumstances. Yet a body of opinion, which seeks to limit the more obvious abuses of state activity, seeks the attainment of freedom by loading the state authority, more than ever, with a multitude of functions, which if successfully imposed would defeat the ends the protagonists of collectivism have in view. That is because the conception of democracy held by such theorists and propagandists remains vague and indefinite, being, indeed, in the condition wherein it was left by the ancient Greeks. The state, when it performs such extra state functions, does so, not as a public convenience, but as a natural right pertaining to it, and we are faced today with the

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