“It is true that the necessity which the State lays on the individual is for the most part one to which he is so accustomed that he no longer kicks against it; but what is it, we may ask, but an external necessity, which he no more lays on himself than he does the weight of the atmosphere or the pressure of summer heat and winter frosts, that compels the ordinary citizen to pay rates and taxes, to serve in the army, to abstain from walking over the Squire’s fields, snaring his hares, or fishing his preserved streams, to pay his rent, to respect those artificial rights of property which only the possessors of them have any obvious interest in maintaining, or even (if he is one of the proletariate) to keep his hands off the superfluous wealth of his neighbour when he has none of his own to lose?” “A conception does not float in the air. It must be somebody’s conception. Whose conception, then, of general good is it that these institutions represent?” “Is it not seriously misleading, when the requirements of the State have so largely arisen out of force directed by selfish motives, and when the motive of obedience to these requirements is determined by fear, to {289} speak of them as having a common source with the morality of which it is admitted that the essence is to be disinterested and spontaneous?” [1] _Principles of Political Obligation_, p. 8; cf. p. 127 ff. I have quoted these passages--the whole section should be carefully read--in order to state plainly a paradox which affects the theory of society from beginning to end. It continually shows itself in the pessimistic criticism of economic motive, political motive, and of every-day social motive. The whole question really depends on our understanding of the relation of abstract and concrete. It is plain, as Green says, that the idea of a common good has never been the sole influence operative in the formation or maintenance of States. And, in as far as it has operated at all, it has only done so in very imperfect forms. Green goes so far as to say that Hegel’s account of freedom as realised in the State does not seem to correspond to the facts of society as it is, or even as, under the unalterable conditions of human nature, it ever could be; though, no doubt, there is a work of moral liberation, which society, through its various agencies, is constantly carrying on for the individual.