330 



pendence. Neither political freedom, nor the right of the other organs and elements of 

 the State are compatible with such unlimited sovereignty, and wherever men have 

 attempted to exercise it, their presumption has been condemned by history. Even the 

 State as a whole is not almighty, for it is limited externally by the rights of other States, 

 and internally by its own nature and by the rights of its individual members" {Theory 

 of the State, p. 491). 



(/) "This," he says, "is very clear to him, but as there are persons, sometimes edu- 

 cated persons, who have no musical ear, or are completely insensible to the beauty of a 

 painting or a drawing, so there are many learned men who are complete strangers to 

 organic or psychological thinking." Hence, he apparently denies to Ahrens the right 

 to call himself a believer in the organic theory of the State. He "has undertaken," he 

 says, to write such a theory ; " but by the organism of the State, he does not so much 

 understand a living and personal collective being, as an organic arrangement for com- 

 munity»in law,'" or (as I suppose it is in the original) right. 



" I made the mistake." he adds, " of presupposing some understanding for this science 

 which I had made known in my Theory of Parties, but I found out I was in error, and 

 that all psychological thinking about the State was strange and unknown to the educa- 

 tion of the day. My Studies were put aside as ' the incomprehensible nonsense of an 

 otherwise intelligent man.' The fruits of these studies, as they have been matured in 

 the present work, are received with general acceptance " {ib.). The last is an astound- 

 ing statement ; and if true would argue almost as low a state of political science in 

 Germany as exists in England ; but in this the author probably flatters himself. 



The work of Mr. Bluntschli is a valuable one, but this extravagant notion that the 

 State is an organic being, or, in plain English, or. at least in logical eflFect, an animal, 

 has vitiated all his conclusions. In this respect Ahrens, and, though I am acquainted 

 only at second hand with his works, I presume Krause, are safer guides. 



(g) Aristotle himself recognized mixed constitutions. Pol.,iv,7: " Quartam quocldam 

 genua reipublicx mnxime probanditm esse censeo, quod est ex his, quse prima dixi, moderatum 

 et permixtum tribus." " Cicero De RepubL, i, 29 . . . . Polybius (vi, 11) had previously de- 

 scribed the Roman constitution as mixed. Plato (Laws, 712) treated Sparta as a mixed 

 government, but without using the phrase" [Theory of the State, p. 332, note). " If it is 

 understood," continues the author, " that the supreme governing power is itself divided 

 between the monarch, the aristocracy and the people, so that two supreme governments 

 exist side by side, each independent of the other, then Tacitus is right in rejecting the 

 idea of a mixed State, and in maintaining that its existence, or, at any rate, its continu- 

 ance, is impossible " {tb., 352, 333). Tacitus' Annals, iv, 33 : " Canctas nationes et urbes pop- 

 ulus, aut priinores, aut singuU reguat : delecta ex iis et consociata rcipublicx forma laudari 

 facdius quain eveiiire, vel si evenit, haud diatuma esse potest." 



(h) Theory of the State, Bluntschli, p. 400, n. : " It is h,ardly neces'Jary to remind English 

 readers," says the translator, " that our constitution is a monarchy only in the popular, 

 and not in the scientific sense." 



(t) Theory of the State, pp. 329, 333 : "It is generally forgotten," he says, in the para- 

 graph last cited, "that the principle of Aristotle's division does not rest on the nature 

 and composition of the legislative power ; for in any advanced State this is usually rep- 

 resentative of the chief elements of the whole nation. On the contrary, it depends on 

 the antithesis between the government and the governed, and upon the (luestion to 

 whom the supreme administrative power belongs. This latter cannot be divided, not 

 even between a king and his ministers, for this would create a dyarchy or triarchy, and 

 would be opposed to the essential character of a State, which, as a living organism, re- 

 quires unity. In all living beings there is a variety of powers and organs, but in this 

 variety there is unity. Some organs are superior and others inferior, but there is always 

 one supreme orgau, in which the directing power is concentrated. The head and the 

 body have no separate and independent life, but they are not equal. So also for the 



