The result has been that men have taken an attitude toward the state very much like the attitude that they have taken toward God. To many people the state has become God. They feel that all the values of life depend upon it, as Plato[78] felt that all the values of life depended upon the state that he described. That does not mean that they go directly to the state for everything that they want; they do not do that with God. They simply expect the state somehow to guarantee these values, and to supply them only as a last resort. But they will go to it for everything that they want and which they can secure in no other way. In the following quotation, the state is described in terms that might almost refer to Providence: “No American boy or girl ... lived a day, even, at the beginning of his life, when he was not protected by the law of the United-States. From that moment the United-States watched over him in ways perhaps which he never thought of. Perhaps the school in which these words are read would not have existed except for the United-States laws with regard to education. Very likely the bread and butter which the boy had for breakfast could never have existed but that the country called the United-States had made laws and carried on government in such ways that the grain could be raised, that the cattle could be fed, and the butter made. It is in a thousand such ways as this that the country in which we live takes care of us in every hour of our lives.... The tie which binds you and me to the country which takes care of us is a tie as real and it involves duties as distinct as the ties which bind a boy to his mother to whom he owes his life and who has always taken care of him.”[79] What happens when a country towards which men have felt in this way, calls for the allegiance of its citizens? Their loyalty will be accorded it in the same measure as the completeness with which they have trusted to it. The state is the only institution in a given area that embodies the general will, and consequently it federates the largest number of loyalties among the people who live there. A class organization could not federate so many loyalties. It could not be done, for instance, by syndicalistic organizations.[80] If a man were a member of all such organizations that he was eligible to, his whole life would still lack unity. There must, then, be something that will unify the life of the individual, and unify the whole of society. The fact of the matter is that the state at the present time is, and in the predictable future is likely to be, the factor which does this. And it is therefore likely also to continue to draw the supreme loyalty of men.