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 superfluity.  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