dividual or as a member of the group. To some
extent the law also _aids_ the individual in performing his functions.
But this simple social order already shows certain basic disharmonies.
It is an experimental regulation of the individual. Every restriction
the individual helps to put upon other individuals by participating in
or acquiescing in the establishment of government and law reacts to
limit his own freedom, in ways which he cannot wholly predict. Freedom
of the individual, even in the simplest social order, becomes greatly
limited, if not necessarily, at least naturally--and indeed
necessarily, since the only choice appears to be between lawful and
lawless limitation of freedom. From the beginning, therefore, there
can be no perfect satisfaction of individual desires or of either
general or individual needs, in the ordered social life. Society as a
whole regulates the conduct of the individual both by aiding and by
inhibiting his activities, and must do so. In doing this, it is plain,
it promotes all or most of the functions of the individual. Ordered
society widens the total sphere of action of the individual. The
individual left to himself tends to become an end-in-himself. Law
makes him to a greater extent a means. In doing this it serves him and
it also uses him, and there can never be any guarantee, in any
individual case, of what the sum of these services and restraints
shall be. Society uses the individual in part, but not exclusively, in
his own service. The good and the evil, the necessity and the dilemma
of all government are outgrowths of this primitive service of the
social organization and this original disharmony among the wills of
individuals and the will of the group to serve the individual and also
at the same time certain general purposes which may not in any given
case coincide with either the desire or the need of the individual.
For this reason we conclude that there can be no _perfect_ government.
All government is experimental and exists by compromise.

What, then, in the most general way, can we say is the legitimate
function or purpose of government? Hocking says that government is the
means of assuring the individual that his achievements will be
permanent. To this end it puts order into the structure of society. In
our view something similar, but not identical with this, is true. We
can say that in its complex forms it is in principle only what we
found it to be in its primitive or si