But great as has been the change in our point of view with reference to the church, our attitude toward the state has been even more profoundly changed. We do not have to go very far back into the past to find government everywhere controlled by a king and privileged class. The ascendency of the few was everywhere established by the sword, but it could not be long maintained by force alone. The ignorance of the masses was in the past, as it is now, the main reliance of those who wished to perpetuate minority rule. Fraud and deception have always been an indispensable means of maintaining class ascendency in government. The primitive politician no less than his present-day successor saw the possibility of utilizing the credulity of the masses for the purpose of furthering his own selfish ends. This explains the long-continued survival of that interesting political superstition which for so many centuries protected class rule under the pretended sanction of a God-given right. The growth of intelligence among the masses by discrediting the doctrine of divine right made it necessary to abandon the old defense of class rule. From that time down to the present the disintegration of the old political order has been rapid. Every effort has been made by the defenders of the old system to find some means of justifying and maintaining class rule--a task which is becoming more and more difficult with the growing belief in democracy. At the present time we are in a transition stage. The divine theory of the state, which was the foundation and support of the old system of class rule, is no longer accepted by intelligent people in any civilized country. But class rule still has its advocates, even in the countries that have advanced farthest in the direction of popular government. The opponents of democracy, however, comprise but a small part of the population numerically, yet, owing to their great wealth and effective organization, their influence as a class is everywhere very great. Over against these is arrayed the bulk of the population, who are struggling, though not very intelligently always, to overcome the opposition of the few and make the political organization and the policy of the state a complete and faithful expression of the popular will. No modern state has yet passed entirely through this transition stage. Everywhere the movement toward democracy has been and is now being energetically resisted by those who fear that thoroughgoing popular government would deprive them of economic or political privileges which they now enjoy. Let us not deceive ourselves by thinking that the old system of class rule has been entirely overthrown. No fundamental change in government or any other social institution ever comes about suddenly. Time, often much time, is required for those intellectual and moral readjustments without which no great change in social institutions can be made. And