Equally independent of the state and however diversified may be the administration as such, the magistrates’ institution, the privileges of towns and professions—all these matters are only relatively important for the state.
In all European states, there is an inequality of contributions of the different classes, their rights and duties. [ . . . ] Inequalities of wealth lead to inequalities of contribution to the state’s expenses and far from hindering the state, the modern states depend upon it. [ . . . ]
In our times a very loose connection, or in fact none at all, may be found in mores, education and language; the identity of these, which at one time was a central pillar of a people’s cohesion, may now also be reckoned an accidental aspect; their divergence does not prevent a multitude from constituting a state. Rome or Athens and every small modern state could not exist, if the many languages which are current in the Russian Empire were spoken there; the same holds true, if the mores were as different as they are in that empire—or even as different as they now are in every capital of a large country. The diversity of language and of dialects [ . . . ] the difference in mores and of education in the various classes [ . . . ] such heterogeneous elements [ . . . ] can now in modern states be managed and kept together by the art of political organization. [ . . . ]
Even in religion wherein the innermost of man expresses itself—which enables the citizens to have confidence in and be sure of each other—I say even in this respect identity has been found unnecessary in modern states.
Just as the sameness of religion has not prevented wars among separate nations, so the lack of sameness of religion does not nowadays tear a state apart. Political authority has learned how to separate itself as pure constitutional law from religious authority and its law, and to acquire enough continuity to establish itself in such a way as no longer to need the church. The modern state has placed the church into the separation from itself which it originally had in the Roman state.
To be sure, political theories, which have in our time been put forward by self-appointed philosophers and humanitarians [Menschheitsrechtlern] and which have even been realized in vast political experiments, have subjected all that we have excluded from the immediate activity of the highest political authority, with the sole exception of language, mores and religion (admittedly the most important). All aspects of a nation’s life are to be determined down to their most minute detail.
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