Of late years dissatisfaction with this doctrine has been making itself more and more loudly expressed. Along with an increasing belief in the extension of the state's administrative capacities has gone an increasing disinclination to leave men's moral and cultural activities to the political organization. The ideal of the _Kulturstaat_ is now sufficiently discredited. Men are coming more and more to recognize the part played in life by non-political organizations and to insist on the importance of preserving the independence and freedom from state control of such associations as churches. The loyalty of individuals to their associations, churches or trade unions, has been conflicting with their loyalty to the state, and men are not prepared to admit that in all such cases of conflict loyalty to the state ought to be paramount. Curiously enough, the central doctrine of the later idealistic school, the personality of the state, lent a force to the criticism of the doctrine of state absolutism. If the state can be described as a person, may not also a church and a trade union? We have begun to learn from Gierke, interpreted and reinforced to us by Maitland, that what is sauce for the state goose is also sauce for the corporation gander, and that associations within the state may claim from the state a greater independence and a recognition of their intrinsic worth because they, as it, embody in some sense a real will over and above the wills of their members. This doctrine of corporate personality is of great interest and complexity, and has not yet been satisfactorily worked out. But I shall not discuss it now because it will not help us far towards a solution of the problem of what are the proper relations between associations and the state, be they personalities or not.