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Engels continues:

"As compared with the ancient gentilic (tribal or clan) organization, the State is distinguished, first of all, by the grouping of the subjects of the State, according to territorial divisions."

Such a grouping seems "natural" to us, but it came after a prolonged and costly struggle against the old form of tribal, gentilic Society.

"The second distinguishing feature is establishment of a public power which is no longer identical with the population and which is organized as an armed force.

"This distinct public power is necessary, because a self-acting armed organization of the population has become impossible with the break-up of Society into classes. … This public authority exists in every State. It consists not only of armed men, but also of material additions in the shape of prisons and repressive institutions of all kinds which were unknown in the gentilic (clan) form of Society."

Engels develops the conception of that "force" which is termed the State—a force arising from Society, but placing itself above it and becoming more and more divorced from it. What does this force consist of, in the main? It consists of special bodies of armed men who have at their command prisons, etc.

We are justified in speaking of special bodies of armed men, because the public power peculiar to every State "is not identical" with the armed population, with its "self-acting armed organization." Like all revolutionary thinkers, Engels tries to draw the attention of the class-conscious workers to that very fact which to the prevailing philistinism appears least of all worthy of attention, most common and sanctified by solid, indeed, one might say, petrified prejudices. A standing army and police are the chief instruments of force of the State authority; but can it, then, be otherwise?

From the point of view of the vast majority of Europeans at the end of the 19th century to whom Engels addressed himself and who had neither lived through nor observed at close quarters a single important revolution, this could not be otherwise. They could not understand what was meant by this. "self-acting armed organization of the population."

To the question whence arose the necessity for the forming of special bodies of armed men (police and standing army) standing above Society and becoming divorced from it, the Western European and Russian philistines are inclined to answer with a