y in the old
sense. The second is that the League of Nations, if it is to mean
anything at all, will have to impair the sovereignty of the states which
join it without thereby constituting in itself a world state. Much of
the opposition to the League of Nations is concerned with this implied
impairment of sovereignty. Whether this opposition will weigh with us
will depend on whether we regard the independent sovereign state as the
be-all and end-all of political theory, or see that the fundamental fact
to be taken into account is man's readiness to co-operate for common
purposes. If we take the latter view, we shall still be holding to what
was the fundamental contribution of the idealist school, the teaching
that the basis of all political questions is moral. The essence of the
matter is how we are prepared to treat other people, for what purposes
we are prepared to act with them, how far we are prepared to recognize
and give settled organized recognition to our mutual obligations. The
political organization is the vehicle and not the creator of these moral
facts. As the facts vary, so will its forces. We may learn from the
Hegelian school to recognize the enormous importance of the state, the
great achievement of the human spirit which its organization represents,
and the folly of light-heartedly endangering its existence, without
making one form which it has taken in the nation state sacrosanct and
absolute.

Let us turn now to the second of our problems, the relation of the state
to associations, such as churches and trade unions, within its borders.
Here again we find a principle, originating in earlier individualist
theory, taken up into idealism. In the beginnings of modern political
theory in the seventeenth century, the absolutist doctrine of the state
was the outcome of the need of the times for strong government. A state
that was not master in its own house was felt to be incapable of the
hard task these troublous times set before it. The French Revolution
made no change in the attitude of the state to associations. New-born
democracy was not inclined to look favourably on the independence of
religious non-democratic associations, and the fact that Leviathan had
become democratic was thought to have transformed him into a monster
within whose capacious maw any number of Jonahs might live at ease or
liberty. Association against a tyrant might be a sacred duty; against
the people it could only be a suspicious s