At the same time that these independent nucleations of authority are increasingly afoot within the body politic, we observe in recent times a seemingly opposite tendency to impute competency to the state in regions where hitherto its writ was not supposed to run. To a purist political philosophy, the function of the state is broadly twofold—the preservation of domestic order and the safeguarding of national interests with reference to other nations. But it has latterly more and more stretched out its tabernacle to cover other matters; even going so far as to assume that a positive and comprehensive culture of national life came legitimately within its domain. That this should be so in a dynastic state like the German is easily understood; for the security and pretensions of the dynasty are dependent upon an intense development of human and material resources for military defence and offence. But even where such particularist designs have not been so obtrusively present, the state has tended more and more to absorb into itself the control and organisation of national life in all its important phases. It has, for instance, taken upon its shoulders almost the entire burden of public education; it has conspicuously concentrated its thought and wisdom upon measures designed to increase the material prosperity of the nation—though in point of fact this has worked out chiefly as the prosperity of a few favourably situated persons. The care of the destitute, old age pensions, health and unemployment insurance have been included within its competency; and its apparently insatiable absorbent proclivity is drawing into its capacious hands the control and operation of the means of communication, the postal service, the railways, telegraph and telephones. Plainly this extension of its office has been accompanied by a large and indefinite increment of authority.