THE FISCAL QUESTION 133 



debt of the individual to society, and especially to the 

 highest form of human society, namely, the State. No 

 fairer destiny was possible to man than to be a citizen of a 

 good State, and they identified the whole duty of man 

 with that of the citizen. The magnitude of the modern 

 State, the stability and permanence and variety of its insti- 

 tutions, the multiplicity of the interests which it in some 

 way reconciles, and the very freedom with which it has 

 endowed its members, conceal from us the political signi- 

 ficance of our private station and duties. The good 

 citizen goes forth to his labour in the morning and returns 

 at eve, and he knows not that by fulfilling the duties of 

 his station he has been strengthening the structure of his 

 State, and serving purposes which far outspan his own. 

 He is a patriot unconscious of his patriotism ; for he does 

 not realise that in fulfilling his function he has contributed 

 his quota to the progress of his country. He does not 

 carry with him the consciousness that his good is its good, 

 and that its good is his good ; nor does he consider that he 

 is a sharer in its common life, that he has no other life, 

 and that no other purposes beat like a pulse in his veins. 

 But the fact is as undeniable in the modern imperial State 

 as it was in the Athens of Pericles. 



It is thus no matter for wonder that the dissolution of 

 the State has always proved to be the ultimate tragedy of 

 human life. The decay of the Greek municipal States, 

 the decline and disintegration of the Roman Empire, the 

 Revolution in France, all show the same spectacle. When 

 a State "crumbles asunder and is disconnected into the 

 dust and powder of individuality," the bonds of private 

 morality themselves are loosened, and man is deprived of 

 his very humanity. The wise, during periods of great 



