not seem idle if we remark that here too
our old Aphorism holds; that again in the Body Politic, as in the
animal body, the sign of right performance is Unconsciousness. Such
indeed is virtually the meaning of that phrase, "artificial state of
society," as contrasted with the natural state, and indicating
something so inferior to it. For, in all vital things, men distinguish
an Artificial and a Natural; founding on some dim perception or
sentiment of the very truth we here insist on: the artificial is the
conscious, mechanical; the natural is the unconscious, dynamical.
Thus, as we have an artificial Poetry, and prize only the natural; so
likewise we have an artificial Morality, an artificial Wisdom, an
artificial Society. The artificial Society is precisely one that knows
its own structure, its own internal functions; not in watching, not in
knowing which, but in working outwardly to the fulfilment of its aim,
does the wellbeing of a Society consist. Every Society, every Polity,
has a spiritual principle; is the embodiment, tentative and more or
less complete, of an Idea: all its tendencies of endeavour,
specialties of custom, its laws, politics and whole procedure (as the
glance of some Montesquieu, across innumerable superficial
entanglements, can partly decipher), are prescribed by an Idea, and
flow naturally from it, as movements from the living source of motion.
This Idea, be it of devotion to a man or class of men, to a creed, to
an institution, or even, as in more ancient times, to a piece of land,
is ever a true Loyalty; has in it something of a religious, paramount,
quite infinite character; it is properly the Soul of the State, its
Life; mysterious as other forms of Life, and like these working
secretly, and in a depth beyond that of consciousness.

Accordingly, it is not in the vigorous ages of a Roman Republic that
Treatises of the Commonwealth are written: while the Decii are rushing
with devoted bodies on the enemies of Rome, what need of preaching
Patriotism? The virtue of Patriotism has already sunk from its
pristine all-transcendant condition, before it has received a name. So
long as the Commonwealth continues rightly athletic, it cares not to
dabble in anatomy. Why teach obedience to the Sovereign; why so much
as admire it, or separately recognise it, while a divine idea of
Obedience perennially inspires all men? Loyalty, like Patriotism, of
which it is a form, was not praised till it had begun to d