GROWTH OF THE STATE 249 



of the State gives to the governing class is manifested by the 

 Socialist party, the object of which is to bring about, through 

 the medium of the State, a dictatorship of the proletariat. The 

 proletariat, having obtained a majority at the polls, are to employ 

 the vast power which the centralisation of State business confers 

 on the Government to alter the structure of society in accordance 

 with the narrowest class interests. Thus State intervention, far 

 from Umiting the desires of the individual, tends to excite these 

 desires and to stimulate them ; for the hope is always left to 

 the individual that what he cannot achieve himself will be 

 achieved for him by the State. 



On the one hand, therefore, the sphere of State control is con- 

 tinually extending, and tending to envelop a greater number 

 of activities appertaiuing to the domain of individual Ufe ; on 

 the other hand, the very nature of the State excludes the 

 possibility of a moral principle adequate to the needs of the 

 individual conscience. The State, in taking upon itself the per- 

 formance of functions to which it is ill adapted, or not adapted 

 at aU, restricts the activity of other social organs, and endeavours 

 to monopoUse all the sources from which the satisfaction of the 

 multitude of human wants is derived. But, as is always the 

 case with hypertrophied organs, the State, thus abnormally 

 extended, cannot even fulfil the normal functions which are its 

 raison d^etre, and the performance of which constitutes its justi- 

 fication. Thus we may say that, as fast as the State undertakes 

 the accomplishment of tasks to which its nature is not adapted, 

 its capacity for accomplishing the primary ends of government 

 is weakened and diminished. 



One great danger which an exaggerated policy of State inter- 

 vention brings with it lies in the atrophy and eventual extinc- 

 tion with which those organs of social existence are menaced 

 which, by their very constitution, are destined to act as powerful 

 factors of social solidarity. Within the State, and also above 

 the State, are other factors which social evolution has brought 



