ABSTRACT
A Definition of “the State” is made very difficult by the variety of objects which the term commonly denotes. The word is sometimes used in a very broad sense, to denote “society” as such, or some special form of society. But the word is also quite frequently used in a much narrower sense, to denote a particular organ of society — for instance, the government, or the subjects of the government, a “nation,” or the territory that they inhabit. The unsatisfactory situation of political theory — which essentially is a theory of the State — is largely due precisely to the fact that different authors treat widely different problems under the same name and that even one and the same author unconsciously uses the same word with several meanings.
