Plato maintains that the object of the constitution of the state is the happiness of the whole, not of any part. [Footnote: _Republic_, II. It must be borne in mind that both Plato and Aristotle had the Greek prejudice touching citizenship. Their "citizenship" was enjoyed by a strictly limited class.] Aristotle, in his "Politics," maintains that it is the aim of the state to enable men to live well. Sidgwick defines politics as "the theory of what ought to be (in human affairs) as far as this depends on the common action of societies of men." [Footnote: _The Methods of Ethics_, chapter ii.] We may agree with all three, and yet leave ourselves much latitude in determining the nature of the organization of, and the limits properly to be set to the activities of, the State as such. Shall the State only strive to repress grave disorders? or shall it take a paternal interest in its citizens, making them virtuous and happy in spite of themselves? 155. ITS ORIGIN AND AUTHORITY.--In Parts III to VI we have seen how and upon what basis the State has grown up. It is an organism, something that lives and grows. It is not a machine, deliberately put together at a definite time by some man or some group of men. The "social contract" fanatic may have read history, but he has not understood it. Of psychology he has no comprehension at all. Herodotus, at some of whose stories we smile, was a wiser man. He writes: "It appears certain to me, by a great variety of proofs, that Cambyses was raving mad; he would not else have set himself to make a mock of holy rites and long-established usages. For, if one were to offer men to choose out of all the customs in the world such as seemed to them the best, they would examine the whole number, and end by preferring their own; so convinced are they that their own usages far surpass those of all others." [Footnote: _The History of Herodotus_, Book III, chapter xxxviii, translated by GEORGE RAWLINSON, London, 1910.] This may be something of an over-statement, for men in one state have shown themselves to be, within limits, capable of learning from men in another. But only within limits. Those things which give a state stability--and without stability we are tossed upon the waves of mere anarchy--have their roots in the remote past. Strip a man of his past, and he is little better than an idiot; strip men within the State of their corporate institutions and ideals, of their loyalties and emotional leanings, and we have on our hands a mob of savages, something much below the tribe proper, knit into unity of purpose by custom and tribal law.