Persons and Things in History

The difference between an inorganic and an organic body lies in this: -- In the first -- a sheaf of corn -- the whole is nothing more than a collection of the individual parts or phenomena. In the second -- a man -- the whole is the effect of, or results from, the parts; it -- the whole -- is every thing, and the parts are nothing.

A State is an idea intermediate between the two -- the whole being a result from, and not a mere total of, the parts, and yet not so merging the constituent parts in the result, but that the individual exists integrally within it. Extremes, especially in politics, meet. In Athens each individual Athenian was of no value; but taken altogether, as Demus, they were every thing in such a sense that no individual citizen was any thing. In Turkey there is the sign of unity put for unity. The Sultan seems himself the State; but it is an illusion: there is in fact in Turkey no State at all: the whole consists of nothing but a vast collection of neighbourhoods.