CHAPTER IX - The solicitude of the State for security more accurately and positively defined—Further development of the idea of security

Summary

Now that I have completed the more important and difficult parts of the present inquiry, and approached nearer to the solution of the great problem which it involves, it becomes necessary to review its progress up to this point, and endeavour to sum up its results.

Firstly, then, the State's care was to be withheld from all objects which do not immediately relate to the external or internal security of its citizens. In the second place, this same security has been represented as the real object of political activity; and, lastly, it has been agreed, that nothing is permissible for the promotion of this object which is designed to work on the morals and character of the nation itself, to bend them to or from any particular course. To a certain extent, therefore, the question as to the proper limits of State agency appears to be already fully solved, seeing that its sphere is confined to the preservation of security; and, in the means available to it, still more narrowly restricted to those which do not interfere, for State ends, with the development of national character, or, rather, do not mould and fashion it with a view to those ends. For although, it is true, this definition is so far purely negative, what remains after such a division of functions, is of itself sufficiently distinct.