I have said that the extreme free traders, much more than the socialists, are _idealists_, or if one prefers it, _ideologists_. Hence in Italy we are witnesses of this strange phenomenon, a sort of fraternising and spiritual sympathy between socialists and free traders, in so far as both are bitter and searching critics of the same thing, which the former call the _bourgeois tyranny_ and the latter _bourgeois socialism_. But in the field of practical activity the socialists (and here I no longer refer especially to Italy) undoubtedly make progress whilst the free traders have to limit themselves to the barrenness of evil-speaking and of aspirations, forming a little group of well-meaning people of select intelligence, who make audience for one another.[60] By this I mean no reproach to these sincere and thoroughly consistent free-traders: rather I sincerely admire them; their lack of success is not their own fault. I wish merely to remark that if ideals, as the philosopher says, have short legs, those of the free traders' ideals are indeed of the shortest. I could continue this exemplification, bringing forward various other social programmes, such as that of state socialism, which consists in accepting the socialist ideal, but as an ultimate end perhaps never fully attainable, and extending its partial attainment over a long course of centuries; and in relying for the effective force, not in a revolutionary class, nor simply in the views of right thinkers, but in the state, conceived as a creative power, independent of and superior to individual wills. It is certainly undeniable that the function of the state, like all social functions, owing to a complication of circumstances, amongst which are tradition, reverence, the consciousness of something which surpasses individuals, and other impressions and sentiments which are analysed by collective psychology, acquires a certain independence and develops a certain peculiar force; but in the estimation of this force great mistakes are made, as socialist criticism has clearly shown: and, in any case, whether it be great or small, we are always faced by a calculation; and one moreover, in the region of opinion, which region science may, in part, yet bring under its power, but which in a great degree will always be rebellious to it.