The difference between professorial socialists and other professors of political economy in Germany is one of degree. The former emphasize more strongly the beneficial effects of governmental intervention, and believe that the state has not as yet gone nearly far enough in recognizing its duties towards the weak and poor and in regulating the distribution of wealth.[202] They regard political economy as, first and foremost, an ethical science. To them the state is, above all things, a moral person. It is, indeed, necessary to obtain a clear understanding of their conception of the state before it is possible to comprehend their teachings. They regard the state as something sacred and divine, holding that it arises out of the essential characteristics of the human nature given us by God. They have a reverence for state obligations which reminds one of the doctrines of the ancient Greeks and of the heroic self-sacrifice of Socrates, who considered it his duty to obey the laws, even when they ordered his death. They consider that the rights of the state spring from a higher source than a social contract, either implicit or explicit, of the citizens with one another. The state stands above the citizens as the Church above its members. Humanity, in their opinion, progresses, and ever must progress, through Church and state. They see God in both. They know nothing of any civilization in the past apart from the state, and are able to imagine none in the future existing outside of such a social organism. In this spirit Professor Schmoller defines the state as the grandest moral institution for the education and development of the human race. The socialists of the chair deprecate any attempt to separate political economy from the higher ideal side of our nature. They do not believe that in business or anywhere should man be governed solely by selfish motives. In practical politics they reject decidedly violent change, but advocate a gradual and peaceful development. Some of them do not expect that their ideal will be realized for a thousand years to come.