State, for instance, troubled little about schools and education; the Church directed and administered the education of the entire community, whereas the modern State has taken over the functions of the theocracy and has gradually come to control the whole field of education. A new lay morality having arisen as a result of the Reformation, of Humanism and of the Renaissance, the State assumed even the philanthropic functions of the Church and transformed them into social legislation. In comparison with the new State, the old was a little thing. Its thinking was done by the Church. If, under theocracy, scholastic philosophy was the handmaid of theology, the old medieval State was the servant of the Church. When the State was emancipated from the Church it had to begin to think, to take over, extend and increase the former ecclesiastical functions. This is why the democratic State is new.
The Value of Morality.
I know with what superiority “practical” and “realist” politicians look down upon the claim that the groundwork of the State, no less than that of the Church, should be moral.
It is easy to forget that society has always been based upon ideas and ideals, upon morality and a philosophy of life, and to over-estimate the value of its material and economic foundations. From the beginning of its historical evolution the State leant, for this reason, upon the moral authority of the Church. This was precisely the origin of theocracy, which developed into democracy. De Tocqueville, whose book “Democracy in America” I have mentioned, lays stress upon the religious foundations of the American Republic and upon their significance even in the present time; and rightly so, for a written Constitution, a Parliament, a bureaucracy, the police, the army, trade and industry cannot guarantee democracy nor can the State ensure it if its citizens lack uprightness and are not agreed upon the weightiest ethical principles of life. We, for our part, need clearly to understand what the making of a new State implies. Long, long ago we lost our dynasty, our State and our army. The people were estranged from the aristocracy and the Church. We had no Parliament—only a feeble substitute for it in the provincial Diets. Now that our State is restored to us, by what institutions, in virtue of what political ideas are we to organize it, how are we to make good this lack of tradition and of authority? Are a bureaucracy and the police, the power of compulsion, enough
