At this stage of political development the military element in loyalty has virtually disappeared. The idea of toleration, of freedom of speech, and above all the idea of organized opposition, alters radically the attributes of the sovereign. For a sovereign who has to be obeyed but not believed in, whose decisions are legitimate matters of dispute, who may be displaced by his bitterest opponents, has lost all semblance of omnipotence and omniscience. “He has sovereignty,” wrote Jean Bodin, “who, after God, acknowledges no one greater than himself.” Our governors command only for the time being—and within strict limits. Their authority is only such as they can win and hold. Political loyalty under these conditions, whatever else it may be, is certainly not unqualified allegiance to those who hold office, to the policies they pursue, or even to the laws they enact. Neither the government as it exists, nor its conduct, nor even the constitution by which it operates, exercises any ultimate claim upon the loyalty of the citizen. The most one can say, I think, is that the loyal citizen is one who loves his country and regards the status quo as an arrangement which he [p263] is at liberty to modify only by argument, according to well-understood rules, without violence, and with due regard for the interests and opinions of his fellow men. If he is loyal to this ideal of political conduct he is as loyal as the modern state can force him to be, or as it is desirable that he should be. 2. _The Evolution of Loyalty_ Broadly speaking, the evolution of political loyalty passes through three phases. In the earliest, the most primitive, and for almost all men the most natural, loyalty is allegiance to a chieftain; in the middle phase it tends to become allegiance to an institution—that is to say, to a corporate, rather than to a human, personality; and in the last phase it becomes allegiance to a pattern of conduct. The kind of government which any community is capable of operating is very largely determined by the kind of loyalty of which its members are capable.