390 



GOVERNMENT 



than in any others ; but is to perform the practices 

 of the State religion, and to profess the creed of 

 its theology, whether he likes the one and believes 

 the other, or not. The ideal of the State is a 

 sternly disciplined regiment, in which the citizens 

 are privates, the State functionaries officers, and 

 every action in life is regulated and settled by 

 the sovereign's "Regulations and Instructions," 

 Disobedience is worse than mutiny. For those 

 who disobey need not even be tried by court- 

 martial. By the very act of insubordination they 

 revoke the social contract, and, falling back into 

 the state of nature that is to say, of the war of 

 each against all they become aliens, who may be 

 dealt with, summarily, as enemies. 



Thus, there are three fundamental points in 

 ^Hobbes's theory of a polity : First, the primitive 

 state of nature, conceived as a state of war, or 

 unrestricted struggle for existence, among men. 

 Second, the contract, by the execution of which 

 men entered into commonwealths or polities. 

 Third, the complete surrender of all natural rights 

 to the sovereign, and the conferring of absolute 

 and despotic authority upon him, or them, by that 

 contract. 



Now, Locke also assumes a primitive state of 

 nature, though its characters are different ; he also 

 assumes the contractual origin of the polity ; and 

 thus, on these two points, is in general agreement 

 with Hobbes. But, with respect to the third 



