ABSTRACT
The object of the two former estates of the realm, which conjointly form the State, was to reconcile the interests of permanence with those of progression-law with liberty. The object of the National Church, the third remaining estate of the realm, was to secure and improve that civilisation without which the nation could be neither permanent nor progressive. The difference between an inorganic and an organic body lies in this: in the first-a sheaf of corn-the whole is nothing more than a collection of the individual parts or phenomena. In the second-a man-the whole is everything and the parts are nothing. A State is an idea intermediate between the two, the whole being a result from, and not a mere total of, the parts, - and yet not so merging the constituent parts in the result, but that the individual exists integrally within it.
