ve read a great many books and articles,
especially by German writers, in which an attempt has been made to set
up "the State" as an entity having conscience, power, and will
sublimated above human limitations, and as constituting a tutelary
genius over us all. I have never been able to find in history or
experience anything to fit this concept. I once lived in Germany for
two years, but I certainly saw nothing of it there then. Whether the
State which Bismarck is moulding will fit the notion is at best a
matter of faith and hope. My notion of the State has dwindled with
growing experience of life. As an abstraction, the State is to me only
All-of-us. In practice--that is, when it exercises will or adopts a
line of action--it is only a little group of men chosen in a very
haphazard way by the majority of us to perform certain services for all
of us. The majority do not go about their selection very rationally,
and they are almost always disappointed by the results of their own
operation. Hence "the State," instead of offering resources of wisdom,
right reason, and pure moral sense beyond what the average of us
possess, generally offers much less of all those things. Furthermore,
it often turns out in practice that "the State" is not even the known
and accredited servants of the State, but, as has been well said, is
only some obscure clerk, hidden in the recesses of a Government bureau,
into whose power the chance has fallen for the moment to pull one of
the stops which control the Government machine. In former days it often
happened that "The State" was a barber, a fiddler, or a bad woman. In
our day it often happens that "the State" is a little functionary on
whom a big functionary is forced to depend.

I cannot see the sense of spending time to read and write observations,
such as I find in the writings of many men of great attainments and of
great influence, of which the following might be a general type: If the
statesmen could attain to the requisite knowledge and wisdom, it is
conceivable that the State might perform important regulative functions
in the production and distribution of wealth, against which no positive
and sweeping theoretical objection could be made from the side of
economic science; but statesmen never can acquire the requisite
knowledge and wisdom.--To me this seems a mere waste of words. The
inadequacy of the State to regulative tasks is agreed upon, as a matter
of fact, by all. Why, then, bring