The marvelous thing about the authority of the State is that
it is recognized by the vast majority of citizens. During eras of peace
the citizen may be always in conflict with the policy of the State. He
may call it a tyranny, but yet when it is in peril he will die to
preserve for it an immortal life. The hold the State establishes over
the spirit of man is the more wonderful when we look rearward on
history, and see with what labor and sacrifice the State was
established. But we see also how readily, once the union has been
brought about, men will die to preserve it, even although it is a
tyranny, a bad State. For what do they die unless the spirit in man has
some inner certitude that the divine event to which humanity tends is a
unity of its multitudinous life, and that a State--even a bad State--
must be preserved by its citizens, because it is at least an attempt at
organic unity? It is a simulacrum of the ideal; it contains the germ
or possibility of that to which the spirit of man is traveling. It
disciplines the individual in service to that greater being in which it
will find its fulfillment, and a bad State is better than no State at
all.
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