ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the ethical aspect of the State’s functions. As the State is the foremost of property holders, so it is the chief of legal persons. At the same time, it is that which gives to all other persons their legal rights. It is of the greatest importance, not only for the State’s own efficiency, but for the development of a national consciousness among its citizens, that the essential unity of the State shall appear to be comprehended in a single personality. By reason of the comprehensive nature of the State, a maturer moral insight is needed to understand its real nature and subordinate the individual will to the social will from motives of pure respect to the moral worth of the latter. The State unites all the tendencies of national life: property and business, law and education. In so doing, the objects that it follows are more various than those of any other association of individuals.
