Right and Wrong in Politics [pp. 265-293]

THE PRINCETON RE VIEW.
answered that the state occupies in the constitution of the world
a position suigeneris, and to which there is nothing which presents any exact resemblance or analogy. So far as our knowledge extends, it is in the life of the state, and only there, that
human life, in all its ramifications, can obtain the nourishment
it needs for its appropriate expansion and development. This
is equally true, indeed, of the family, and we believe it to be true
of some still higher and less materially constituted society which,
amidst all the limitless interpretations which have been placed
upon the name, still retains for Christians the profoundest significance-that is, the Church. Each of these organizations has
an essential contribution to make to the perfection of human
society and to the perfection of individual life in that society.
Both lay claim to the devout allegiance, within proper limits,
of the persons who compose it; and each, on the other hand,
owes to those persons the maintenance of its own peculiar character and the faithful discharge of its tutelary duties.
It is thus that the largest-minded heathen philosophers, such
as Aristotle and Cicero, discerned that in a life of public activity
on behalf of the state something more was concerned than the
accomplishment of narrow personal aspirations. In the same
way, even with all the refinements of modern ethical criticism,
it is intuitively felt that the self-seeking of such men as Henry
VIII. of England, Frederick the Great of Prussia, and even of
Napoleon Bonaparte, has to be submitted to a very different,
tho perhaps not more indulgent, ordeal from that which is
applicable to ordinary men acting in a more circumscribed area.
The root of this feeling is, no doubt, a true consciousness that
the mere contact with state affairs, and the lively apprehension
it carries with it of the innumerable and lasting interests which
the conduct of a single man affects, has of itself a sobering influence, which, by dwarfing into insignificance all mere personal
cravings, forces even the most narrow minds into a certain
largeness of action which suggests a dominant sense of accountability to something other and better than a temporary and
vacillating public opinion
The faults of this moral inquisition as applied in the pagan
world were due in a large degree to the constitution of the preChristian states, in which a slave population vastly exceeded in
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