JtROPOl'KIN It is therefore important, after having so often criticised the present State, to seek the cause of its appearance, to investigate the part played by it in the past, to compare it with the institutions which it superseded.. Let us first agree as to what we mean by the word State. There is the German school that likes to confuse the State with Society. This confusion is to be met even among the best German. thinkers and many French ones, who cannot conceive society without State concentration; and thence arises the habitual reproach cast 01?- Anarchists of wanting to "destroy society" and of "preaching the return of perpetual war of each against all." · Yet to reason thus is entirely to ignore the progress made in the· domain of history during the last thirty years; it is to ignore that men have lived in societies for thousands of years before having known the State; it is to forget that for European nations the State is of recent origin-that it hardly dates from the sixteenth century; it is to fail to recognise that the most glorious epochs in humanity were those in which the liberties and local life were not yet destroyed by the State, and when masses of men lived in communes and free federations. The State is but one of the forms taken by society in the course of his~ory. How can one be confused with the other? On the other band, the State has also been confused with government. As there can be no State without government, it bas been sometimes said that it is the absence of government, and not the abolition of the State, that should be the aim. It seems to. me, however, that State and government represent two ideas of a different kind. The State not only includes the exist- ~ce of a power placed above society, but also a territorialconcentration and a concentrationof many or even all functions of t!Jelife of society in the hands of a few. It implies new relations among die members of society. • This characteristic distinction, which perhaps escapes notice at first sight, appears clearly when the origin of the State is studied. To really urtderstand· the State, there is, in fact, but one way: it is to study it in its historical development, and that is what I shall endeavour to do. . The Roman Empire was a State in the true sense of the word. Up till now ~t is the ideal of the studc;!ltSof law. . . Its organs covered a vast domain with a close network. Everything flo~ed towards Rome :_ economic life, military life, judicial -.relations, riches, education, even religion. From Rome came laws, P13gistrates',legions to defend their territory, governors to rule dje provinces, gods. The whole life of the Empire could be traced back to the Senate; later on. to the Ca:sar, the _omnipotent,omniscient, t4e god of the Empire. Every province, every district bad frs mmiiture 10 Biblioteca Gino Bianco
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