"When men parted first from their Christianity and then from their deism, the deification of the state was bound to be achieved in a comparatively short space of time; for no system can pretend to face all weathers when it has been reduced to naked individualism and the mere assertion of individual rights. Men make gods now, not out of wood and stone, which though a waste of time is a comparatively harmless proceeding, but out of their abstract nouns, which are the most treacherous and explosive things in the world."