For them the fact of discontinuity was vital.

They could not but ask for happiness in their own individual lives no less than in the State of which they were part.

They came to see that without self-government in the sense of their own active participation in power, such happiness must go unfulfilled.

The State, in fact, may have the noblest purpose; but its object is attempted by agents who are also mortal men.

The basis of their scrutiny became at once pragmatic.