m 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. Dr.
Arnold, fresh from the study of Greek thought and Roman history, used
to preach that this identity was the great cure for the misguided
modern world. But he spoke to ears filled with other sounds and minds
filled with other thoughts, and they hardly knew his meaning, much less
heeded it. But though the teaching was wrong for the modern age to
which it was applied, it was excellent for the old world from which it
was learnt. What is there requisite is a single government--call it
Church or State, as you like--regulating the whole of human life. 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 perhaps a
'trade's union' is as near as most things; to work cheap is thought to
be a 'wicked' thing, and so some Broadhead puts it down.

The object of such organisations is to create what may be called a cake
of custom. All the actions of life are to be submitted to a single rule
for a single object; that gradually created the 'hereditary drill'
which science teaches to be essential, and which the early instinct of
men saw to be essential too. That this regime forbids free thought is
not an evil; or rather, though an evil, it is the necessary basis for
the greatest good; i