261 



Hence, " the State, as the exterior form of justice, ought to assure to its citizens all the 

 conditions necessary for accomplishing freely the totality of their destiny ; but the 

 interior conditions of liberty and moral merit, the internal operations of the mind, and 

 the superior powers of the understanding-' and the will areoutsideof its sphere, and above 

 its means. In these particulars, the State can only give the exterior conditions .... 

 thus giving legitimacy {derecho) to the activity of other institutions relating to the 

 destiny of humanity ; but the State can neither found nor direct the interior life of these 

 Institutions" (Id., Sec. 25). 



We add, for the purpose of more fully explaining and illustrating the organic 

 theory of the State, the following observations of Mr. Ahrens, whose views we have 

 already so largely noted : 



" No organism can exist and be developed without a certain equilibrium between all 

 its parts. In the physical organism it is maintained by natural laws. In the ethical and 

 free organism of the State it ought to be preserved by rational laws formulated and 

 executed according to the free fluctuations of the social life of the State. To maintain 

 to a certain degree, the equilibrium, the proportion, the harmony between the different 

 branches of the social work of culture, above all to arrest evident deviations and pro- 

 tuberances, this is the important function that the State ought to fullill, both by general 

 laws regulating better the relations between the different parts, and by afiirmative aids, 

 which it can distribute, according to the rules of a just prof)ortion. 



" It is this action of organic relation established first in general in the three organic 

 functions of right which we have yet to determine more in detail 



" (1) The first principle which ought to guide the State in its activity is to recognize 

 the probable nature, the independence, the autonomy of all the spheres of life, pursuing 

 ends distinct from the juridical and from the political end. We have already sufficiently 

 observed that these principles are to receive consecration by the practice of self-govern- 

 ment applicable to all the spheres and to all the degrees of human society. 



" (2) The second principal function of the State admitted by all theorists, is of the 

 negative and restrictive nature. It consists in removing in the domain left free to the 

 operation oflaissezfaire, laissez passer, those obstacles which are too great to be overcome 

 by individual forces, in imposing upon the liberty of each the limits necessary for the 

 existenceof the liberty of all, and in submitting for the maintenance of eternal peace, all 

 controversies to the tribunals. It is to this function, without doubt, very important, that 

 a theory, the expression of an extreme tendency, has wished to reduce the end of the 

 State. It is, as we have seen, the exclusive, abstract form of the theory which considers 

 the State as the order of right [I'nrdre da droit), isolating it from all the ends of culture ; 

 an opinion practiced largely in England, systematized by Kant, and carried to excess by 

 the English positivism of Buckle 



" (3) There is then a third function assigned to the State by its end, and consisting in 

 favoring, directly and positively, the social development. All modern theorists who 

 have elevated themselves above the narrow piint of view of the doctrine of laissez alter 

 are in accord upon this fundamental principle, but none of them have undertaken to 

 determine the mode or the manner in which the State ought to favor the social culture." 

 " We will cite only," continues Mr. Ahrens in a note, " some eminent writers outside of 

 Germany. Mr. J. S. Mill says that the intervention of the State ought to be admitted 

 only in cases of imperious utility. Mr. Ch. de Remusat says : ' Whenever the question 

 is doubtful, whenever imperious antecedents, or a necessity generally felt, does not take 

 away the faculty of choosing between the coercive system (the action of the State), and 

 the voluntary system (self-government), do not hesitate to reject the power and trust 

 yourselves to liberty.' Mr. Ed Laboulaye says : " The end of the State is the protection 

 of the moral and the material interests of all its citizens. The maintenance of the State 

 is then the first guaranty of liberty. To give the State the highest degree of power, it is 

 necessary to charge it only with that which it ought to do necessarily. Otherwise it is 

 to employ the force of all to paralyze the energy of each.' Mr. L. Bland (I'Etat et la 

 Commune, 18i6) says : ' Whenever the intervention of the State is in opposition to the 

 free development of the human faculties, it is an evil ; but whenever it aids in that 

 development, or removes an opposing obstacle, it is a good.' Nevertheless these princi- 

 ples of necessity and of affirmative aid, demand to be more precisely formulated. 



PROC. AMER. PHILOS. SOC. XXXIV. 148. 2 H. PRINTED OCT. 5, 1895. 



