400 GOVERNMENT i\ 



Absolute equality of power and wealth is not 

 required, but neither opulence nor beggary is to 

 be permitted ; and it is to depend upon the legis- 

 lators' view of the circumstances whether the 

 community shall devote itself to agriculture or to 

 manufactures and commerce (liv. ii. chap. xi.). 

 Thus the State is to control distribution no less 

 than production. Moreover, the sovereign people 

 is to settle the articles of a State religion, not 

 exactly as religious dogmas, but as " sentiments 

 of sociability without which a man can neither be 

 a good citizen nor a faithful subject " : 



"Without being able to oblige any one to believe them, he 

 may banish from the State whoever does not believe them ; he 

 may banish them, not for impiety, but for unsociability as 

 persons incapable of sincerely loving the laws or justice, and of 

 sacrificing themselves to duty if needful. ... If any one, after 

 having acknowledged these same dogmas, conducts himself as if 

 he did not believe them, let him be punished with death : he 

 has committed the greatest of crimes, he has lied before the 

 law (liv. iv. chap. viii.). 



The articles of the State creed are : the t 

 ence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent, fore- 

 seeing and provident Deity ; the life to come, the 

 happiness of the just, the punishment of the 



the temporary monarchy of one orator" (De Corpore Politico, 

 chap. ii. 5). The alternative of dominion does not lie between a 

 sovereign individual and a sovereign multitude, but between an 

 aristarchy and a deman-hy, that is to say, betwjefm an 

 cratic and a democratic oligarchy. The chief business <>t the 

 aristarchy is to persuade the king, eiypeivr, ur czar, that he 

 wants to go the way they wish him to goY that of the demarehy 

 is to do the like with tl^e mob. 



