NOTES 



Scientific Politics.— VI. The Theory of the State. 



There have been as many theories of the State as of sex, most 

 of them equally disputable. But the controversial point about 

 sex is its beginning, that of the State its end. No biologist 

 ever doubted the function and purpose of sex. Every politician 

 has a different view of the function and purpose of the State. 



Its primitive purpose, however, is not in doubt : it was an 

 insurance corporation. Every State is historically a union of 

 men for defence (sometimes for offence) ; and it seems certain 

 that its other internal characteristics are only adaptations, and 

 often merely local adaptations, of the corporation to that end. 



The family is an enlargement of the individual ; the herd, 

 tribe, nation. State are successive extensions of the family. 

 Each has been evolved as a defence against accident, disaster, 

 and external aggression ; each presupposes the co-operation 

 and occasional sacrifice of the unit for the mass ; each recog- 

 nises that the unit is mortal and proceeds on the assumption 

 that the mass is immortal. The State may take many forms : 

 a theocracy, autocracy, democracy ; or it may be a State within 

 a State, a religious sect, a learned society, or a trade union ; 

 but always it is first and foremost a study in continuity. 



The State, like all insurance corporations, deals in selected 

 lives. In the more primitive States superfluous infants are 

 exposed, and in times of stress the aged are put to death and 

 even eaten ; a method of turning the consumer to account as 

 a producer which might be defended theoretically by a strict 

 economist, but will hardly be advocated in practice — if only 

 on the grounds of good taste — by contemporary society. 



The civilised State is therefore less strict in its selection of 

 lives than its savage ancestors ; indeed, in some ways it has 

 reversed the older methods. Directly or indirectly, the State 

 subsidises every child in Britain to-day, by allowance on paren- 

 tal income-tax, by free education, and, in some cases, free meals 

 at school. And so far from disposing of the aged as useless 

 mouths, it endows them with a pension. 



Whatever may be alleged against civilisation as intensifying 

 the struggle for existence during the more active years of life, 



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