Many and varied have been the arguments by which the State and its intellectuals have induced their subjects to support their rule. Basically, the strands of argument may be summed up as follows: (a) the State rulers are great and wise men (they "rule by divine right," they are the "aristocracy" of men, they are the "scientific experts"), much greater and wiser than the good but rather simple subjects, and (b) rule by the extent government is inevitable, absolutely necessary, and far better, than the indescribable evils that would ensue upon its downfall. The union of Church and State was one of the oldest and most successful of these ideological devices. The ruler was either anointed by God or, in the case of the absolute rule of many Oriental despotisms, was himself God; hence, any resistance to his rule would be blasphemy. The States' priestcraft performed the basic intellectual function of obtaining popular support and even worship for the rulers.[1]
Another successful device was to instill fear of any alternative systems of rule or nonrule. The present rulers, it was maintained, supply to the
- ↑ Cf. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, pp. 87–100. On the contrasting roles of religion vis-à-vis the State in ancient China and Japan, see Norman Jacobs, The Origin of Modern Capitalism and Eastern Asia (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1958), pp. 161–94.
Macmillan, 1952), pp. 182–224; and Harry Elmer Barnes, The Court Historians Versus Revisionism (n.d.), pp. 2ff.
