It might seem desirable to pass in review all these empirical distinctions and questions which the philosophers have thought that they had satisfactorily solved, when they had, on the contrary, passed beyond them. But the theme is inexhaustible, and we cannot here give even a rich selection, comprising the most frequent and important cases. We must limit ourselves to brief mention.--People discuss every day: whether war be an evil, and if it be possible to abolish it; if community of goods should take the place of private property; if rational government be that of liberty or of authority, of democracy or aristocracy, of anarchism or state organization; whether the State should be in the Church or the Church in the State, or side by side and independent; if freedom of thought should be admitted or restrained; if instruction should be free or undertaken by the State; and other similar problems. Now behold the philosopher applying himself to the study of these ideas. Having tested them, he is astonished that people can find in them opposing terms, and make them argument for dispute. In truth (he says), war is intrinsic to reality, and peace is peace in so far as by making an end of one war it prepares another; as Socrates demonstrated in the _Phaedo,_ when, scratching his leg in the place where it had been pressed by the chain, he realized that he could not have experienced that pleasure had he not previously experienced the pain. Nor is property different from communism: the individual declares himself by an individual taking possession of things and becoming their owner; but by so doing he enters into relations and into communion with other individuals, and does business with them. And liberty excludes subjection the less, since _sub lege libertas;_ nor does aristocracy exclude democracy, since the true aristocrat is the bearer of those universal values that are the substance of democracy; hence the more we are aristocratic the more we are democratic, and inversely. Nor does anarchism exclude State organization, because a collection of men, however free we suppose it to be, must nevertheless govern itself according to some laws, and these laws are the State. Then, the ideal State, being the best government of men for their perfectionment, both material and spiritual, accomplishes the work of the Church itself, which is neither above, nor below, nor beside the State, because it is the State. Thus in like manner, no one can grant or abolish freedom of thought, since thought is by definition freedom, and the restraint is thought itself, because liberty coincides with necessity. And finally State instruction cannot but correspond with rational demands, and the free instruction of citizens, if it be really so and not arbitrary and capricious, will be the same as that of the State, or will be changed into the instruction of the State. [Sidenote: _Other examples._]