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REACTIONARY CONCEPT OF THE STATE.
I.Reactionary concept of the State.
Reactionary concept of the State .-- Analogy between this idea of the State and that of antiquity .-- Difference between antique and modern society .-- Changed circumstances.
The Jacobin theory can then be summarized in the following points: * The speculative creation of a curtailed type of human being.
* An effort to adapt the living man to this type.
* The interference of public authority in every branch of public endeavor.
* Constraints put upon labor, trade and property, upon the family and education, upon worship, habits, customs and sentiments.
* The sacrifice of the individual to the community.
* The omnipotence of the State.
No theory could be more reactionary since it moves modern man back to a type of society which he, eighteen centuries ago, had already passed through and left behind.
During the historical era proceeding our own, and especially in the old Greek or Latin cities, in Rome or Sparta, which the Jacobins take for their models,[2201] human society was shaped after the pattern of an army or convent.

In a convent as in an army, one idea, absorbing and unique, predominates: * The aim of the monk is to please God at any sacrifice.
* The soldier makes every sacrifice to obtain a victory.
Accordingly, each renounces every other desire and entirely abandons himself, the monk to his rules and the soldier to his drill.

In like manner, in the antique world, two preoccupations were of supreme importance.

In the first place, the city had its gods who were both its founders and protectors: it was therefore obliged to worship these in the most reverent and particular manner; otherwise, they abandoned it.
The neglect of any insignificant rite might offend them and ruin it.
In the second place, there was incessant warfare, and the spoils of war were atrocious; on a city being taken every citizen might expect to be killed or maimed, or sold at auction, and see his children and wife sold to the highest bidder.[2202] In short, the antique city, with its acropolis of temples and its fortified citadel surrounded by implacable and threatening enemies, resembles for us the institution of the Knights of St.John on their rocks at Rhodes or Malta, a religious and military confraternity encamped around a church .-- Liberty, under such conditions, is out of the question: public convictions are too imperious; public danger is too great.