e, he wonders at finding in those recognized teachers so
much contrary teaching. They both, unlike as they are, hold with
Xenophon so unlike both, that man is "the hardest of all animals to
govern." Of Plato it might indeed be plausibly said that the adherents
of an intuitive philosophy, being "the Tories of speculation," have
commonly been prone to conservatism in government; but Aristotle, the
founder of the experience philosophy, ought according to that doctrine
to have been a Liberal if any one ever was a Liberal. In fact, both of
these men lived when men "had not had time to forget" the difficulties
of government: we have forgotten them altogether. We reckon as the basis
of our culture upon an amount of order, of tacit obedience, of
prescriptive governability, which these philosophers hoped to get as a
principal result of their culture; we take without thought as a _datum_
what they hunted as a _quaesitum_.

In early times the quantity of government is much more important than
its quality. What you want is a comprehensive rule binding men together,
making them do much the same things, telling them what to expect of each
other,--fashioning them alike and keeping them so: what this rule is,
does not matter so much. A good rule is better than a bad one, but any
rule is better than none; while, for reasons which a jurist will
appreciate, none can be very good. But to gain that rule, what may be
called the "impressive" elements of a polity are incomparably more
important than its useful elements. How to get the obedience of men, is
the hard problem; what you do with that obedience is less critical.

To gain that obedience, the primary condition is the identity--not the
union, but the sameness--of what we now call "church" and "state."... No
division of power is then endurable without danger, probably without
destruction: the priest must not teach one thing and the king another;
king must be priest and prophet king,--the two must say the same because
they are the same. The idea of difference between spiritual penalties
and legal penalties must never be awakened,--indeed, early Greek thought
or early Roman thought would never have comprehended it; there was a
kind of rough public opinion, and there were rough--very rough--hands
which acted on it. We now talk of "political penalties" and
"ecclesiastical prohibition" and "the social censure"; but they were all
one then. Nothing is very like those old communities now, but pe