uperfluity. In a very
different way the Prussian state, centralized, efficient, and Erastian,
organizing the whole resources of the community under the guidance of
the state, enforced the same principle. The state is a moral
institution, it cannot surrender the inculcation and upholding of
morality to an alien or independent body. From all the sources of modern
idealistic political theory, Plato, Rousseau, Hegel, comes the same
principle of state absolutism over associations within the state. The
principle was put in idealistic form in the doctrine that the state is a
supra-personal will, absorbing in itself the activities of its members.

Of late years dissatisfaction with this doctrine has been making itself
more and more loudly expressed. Along with an increasing belief in the
extension of the state's administrative capacities has gone an
increasing disinclination to leave men's moral and cultural activities
to the political organization. The ideal of the _Kulturstaat_ is now
sufficiently discredited. Men are coming more and more to recognize the
part played in life by non-political organizations and to insist on the
importance of preserving the independence and freedom from state control
of such associations as churches. The loyalty of individuals to their
associations, churches or trade unions, has been conflicting with their
loyalty to the state, and men are not prepared to admit that in all such
cases of conflict loyalty to the state ought to be paramount.

Curiously enough, the central doctrine of the later idealistic school,
the personality of the state, lent a force to the criticism of the
doctrine of state absolutism. If the state can be described as a person,
may not also a church and a trade union? We have begun to learn from
Gierke, interpreted and reinforced to us by Maitland, that what is sauce
for the state goose is also sauce for the corporation gander, and that
associations within the state may claim from the state a greater
independence and a recognition of their intrinsic worth because they, as
it, embody in some sense a real will over and above the wills of their
members. This doctrine of corporate personality is of great interest and
complexity, and has not yet been satisfactorily worked out. But I shall
not discuss it now because it will not help us far towards a solution of
the problem of what are the proper relations between associations and
the state, be they personalities or not.

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