's moral nature and being in turn the
form in which that moral nature expresses itself. In a notable phrase of
Dr. Bosanquet's, a phrase to which he has given constant detailed
amplification, 'institutions are ethical ideas'; moral purpose may seem
to shine dimly enough in many actual institutions, but it is the only
light which shines in them at all, and only in that light can their
meaning and reality be understood.

The main principles of this idealistic school may be safely said to have
by this time established themselves against criticism. Of recent years
Social Psychology has done much to explain the gap between the
contemplated purpose and the actual working of institutions, and has
given precision and definiteness to those elements in human nature which
strengthen or weaken social solidarity. Economists have come to see that
economic relations are possible only within the framework of a society
which has its root in moral and political purpose, although within that
framework they may be theoretically isolated and studied by themselves.
Sociology, after many false starts, inspired by the mistaken belief that
a scientific treatment of society should interpret higher forms in the
light of lower, has now found it possible to study the manifold variety
of institutional and social life on the basis provided by idealistic
philosophy.

As a theory of society, in short, this philosophy holds the field. It
has been criticized of late years as a theory of the state, and as these
criticisms show both where the idealistic theory was in some respects
defective and also where the chief problems for political philosophy in
the future are to be found, I shall devote the greater part of my
lecture to these considerations.

The idealistic school drew their inspiration from the theory of the
Greek city state, and in their conception of the function of the state
they assumed an essential identity between the Greek city state and the
modern nation state. In so far as these two types of state have been the
most self-conscious types of society that have existed, and have
therefore displayed explicitly the purpose that is implicit in all
society, the identification has been sound and fruitful; in so far,
however, as the identity is pressed to imply that in the modern state
the definite political or governmental organization should play the same
function as it did in the Greek city state, the identification has been
mistaken.

The G