not only found the state, but also the church. They inspire or
reveal the truth, ordain or prohibit worships, judge of
doctrines, and decide cases of conscience. Mazzini said , when
at the bead of the Roman Republic in 1848, the question of
religion must be remitted to the judgment of the people. Yet
this theory is the dominant theory of the age, and is in all
civilized nations advancing with apparently irresistible force.

But this theory has its difficulties. Who are the collective
people that have the rights of society, or, who are the sovereign
people? The word people is vague, and in itself determines
nothing. It may include a larger or a smaller number; it may
mean the political people, or it may mean simply population; it
may mean peasants, artisans, shopkeepers, traders, merchants, as
distinguished from the nobility; hired laborers or workmen as
distinguished from their employer, or slaves as distinguished
from their master or owner. In which of these senses is the word
to be taken when it is said, "The people are sovereign?" The
people are the population or inhabitants of one and the same
country. That is something. But who or what determines the
country? Is the country the whole territory of the globe? That
will not be said, especially since the dispersion of mankind and
their division into separate nations. Is the territory
indefinite or undefined? Then indefinite or undefined are its
inhabitants, or the people invested with the rights of society.
Is it defined and its boundaries fixed? Who has done it? The
people. But who are the people? We are as wise as we were at
starting. The logicians say that the definition of idem per
idem, or the same by the same, is simply no definition at all.