602 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



gods; the protectors and guardians of their state. Or 

 it may attach itself to certain persons, who are deemed 

 to be, whether by divine appointment, by long pre- 

 scription, or by the general recognition of their supe- 

 rior capacity and worthiness, the rightful guides and 

 guardians of the rest. Or it may attach itself to laws ; 

 to ancient liberties, or ordinances; to the whole or 

 some part of the political, or even the domestic, insti- 

 tutions of the state. But in all political societies 

 which have had a durable existence, there has been 

 some fixed point; something which men agreed in 

 holding sacred ; which it might or might not be lawful 

 to contest in theory, but which no one could either 

 fear or hope to see shaken in practice; which, in 

 short (except perhaps during some temporary crisis), 

 was in the common estimation placed above discussion. 

 And the necessity of this may easily be made evident. 

 A state never is, nor until mankind are vastly im- 

 proved, can hope to be, for any long time exempt 

 from internal dissension ; for there neither is nor has 

 ever been any state of society in which collisions did 

 not occur between the immediate interests and pas- 

 sions of powerful sections of the people. What, then, 

 enables society to weather these storms, and pass 

 through turbulent times without any permanent weak- 

 ening of the ties which hold it together? Precisely 

 this that however important the interests about 

 which men fall out, the conflict does not affect the 

 fundamental principles of the system of social union 

 which happens to exist; nor threaten large portions 

 of the community with the subversion of that on 

 which they have built their calculations, and with 

 which their hopes and aims have become identified. 

 But when the questioning of these fundamental prin- 

 ciples is (not an occasional disease, but) the habitual 



