Maitland predicts that English jurists will be compelled to accept this new doctrine thus introduced from Germany, but it would appear that this forecast is not likely to be verified. However, if the jurists have not followed his lead, other thinkers have to some extent done so. Thus we find Dr. Figgis eagerly urging the doctrine in order to give greater autonomy and dignity to associations within the State, and especially to the churches; and so-called "Guild Socialists" making use of the idea to reinforce their contention that "functional" groups of industrial workers should be permitted to determine for themselves the manner in which their respective occupations should be carried on.

Dr. Figgis' views are best set forth in his volume, Churches in the Modern State, published in 1913, in which he says:

"What really concerns us is not so much whether or no a religious body be in the technical sense established, but whether or no it be conceived as possessing any living power of self-development or whether it is conceived either as a creature of the State, or, if allowed a private title, is to be held rigidly under the trust-deeds of her foundation, thereby enslaved to the dead. . . . Does the Church exist by some inward living force, with powers of self-development like a person; or is she a mere aggregate, a fortuitous concourse of ecclesiastical atoms, treated it may be as one for purposes of convenience, but with no real claim to a mind or will of her own except so far as the civil power sees good to invest her for the nonce with a fiction of unity?"

This question, he properly points out, is not one with which the Church or the State is alone concerned. "Since, as a fact, religious bodies are only one class of a number of other societies, all having claim to this inherent life, it is clear that the question concerns not merely ecclesias

tical privilege, but the whole complex structure of civil society and the nature of political union. . . . Are corporate societies to be conceived as real personalities or as fictitious ones, that is, is their union to be throughout of such a nature that it has a life greater than the mere sum of the individuals composing the body; that it is not merely a matter of contract; that in action it has the marks of mind and will which we attribute to personality; that this corporate life and personality grows up naturally and inevitably out of any union of men for permanent ends, and is not withheld or granted at the pleasure of the State. . . . It is, in a word, a real life and personality which those bodies are forced to claim, which we believe that they possess by the nature of the case, and not by arbitrary grant of the sovereign. To deny this real life is to be false to the facts of social existence, and is of the same nature as that denial of human personality which we call slavery, and is always in its nature unjust and tyrannical." 10

Again, he says: "The State did not create the family nor did it create the Churches; nor even in any real sense can it be said to have created the club or the trades union; nor in the Middle Ages the guild or the religious order, hardly even the universities or the colleges within the universities; they have all arisen out of the natural associative instincts of mankind, and should all be treated by the supreme authority as having a life original and guaranteed, to be controlled and directed like persons, but not regarded in their corporate capacity as mere names, which for juristic purposes and for these purposes only are entitled persons. As a matter of fact, in England at least, it is these smaller associations which have always counted for most in the life of the individual. His school or college, his parish or county, his union or regiment, his wife 10 Op. cit., pp. 40-42.

or family is the most vitally formative part in the life of most men; and in so far as England has anything worthy in civic life to show to the world, it is this spectacle of individuals bred up or living within these small associations which mould the life of men more ultimately than does the great collectivity we call the State." 11

It will be seen that the argument of Dr. Figgis and of those who agree with him is not to break down the legal supremacy of the State but to emphasize the point that, just as the State is a real person with its own independent life to lead and its own general ends to realize, so the other and smaller groups or associations within the bodypolitic have their independent lives to live and ends to realize, and that, therefore, this fact should be recognized by the State with the result that these other corporate personalities should be left to live and function within the respective spheres, thus marked out for them, free from the controlling direction of state law. "Of course," says Dr. Figgis, "the State may and must require certain marks, such as proofs of registration, permanence, constitution, before it recognizes the personality of societies, just as it does, though in a less degree, in the case of individuals; and the complex nature of the body may necessitate a more complex procedure. Also the State will have to regulate and control the relations of corporate individuals to one another and to natural persons. But all this does not and need not imply that corporate personality is the gift of the sovereign, a mere name to be granted or withheld at its pleasure; and that permanent societies can come into being and go on acting without it." 12

Other writers, however, among whom may be especially mentioned Harold J. Laski, are not thus considerate towards the State. They would deny the legal supremacy

of the State, and place all real Gesammtpersonen upon a plane of complete juristic equality, and thus introduce a veritable régime of political pluralism.

It is not convenient in the present work to examine in detail the views of Laski regarding the nature of the State's sovereignty, and it will be sufficient to say here that, for some reason or other, he persistently adds to the jurist's conception of sovereignty qualities which the jurist expressly excludes, and that it is upon the basis of this false definition that he denies to sovereignty that omnicompetence which jurists ascribe to it. Having as he thinks, thus stripped sovereignty of its absoluteness, he claims to show that the State is not the only group of individuals which can be said to be sovereign in character, but that, upon the contrary, it shares this quality, as well as that of real personality, with an indefinite number of other organized associations of men.

Criticism of the Doctrine of "Real" Personality. As has been the case in so many other long continued disputes, and as was indeed the case in the dispute between the mediæval nominalists and realists whose roots ran back to the differences between the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, the real trouble in the matter of group or state personality has been that the disputants have had different ideas in mind and, therefore, have not squarely met each other's contentions. Thus, those who have urged that a politically organized or otherwise united group of individuals should be viewed as real rather than as merely fictitious persons have had in mind the fact that, irrespective of their recognition by law as bodies corporate, they constitute real unities, something more than arithmetical sums of the individual human beings constituting them, the constitutive or creative principle or force producing this unity being the fact that the group, as such, has ends to be realized which are distinct from the ends of its in

dividual members, distributively considered, as well as from the sum of those ends, and, furthermore, that there is a common consciousness upon the part of their members that they are integral members of the collectivity to which they belong, and that, only through the activity of this whole, can they secure the ends which they all desire. That, in this sense, group entities are real, and come into being irrespective of state action, and that incorporation by law is but a recognition by the political authority of conditions of fact which the State has had no part in creating, may be at once admitted. As one of the earlier, but still authoritative, American writers upon the law of corporations, Victor Morawetz, has said:

"The conception of a number of individuals as a corporate or collective entity occurs in the earliest stages of human development, and is essential to many of the most ordinary processes of thought. Thus, the existence of tribes, village communities, families, clans, and nations implies a conception of these several bodies of individuals as entities having corporate rights and attributes. An ordinary copartnership or firm is constantly treated as a united or corporate body in the actual transaction of business, though it is not recognized in that light in the procedure of the courts of law. So, in numberless other instances, associations which are not legally incorporated are considered as personified entities, acting as a unit and in one name; for example, political parties, societies, committees, courts." 13

Quoting this paragraph another leading American jurist says: "All that the law can do is to recognize, or refuse to recognize the existence of this entity. The law can no more create such an entity than it can create a house out of a collection of loose bricks. If the bricks are put together so as to form a house, the law can refuse to "Private Corporations, 2d ed., sec. 1.