mple forms. _Government is
ideally a means of aiding all the functions of every individual._
_Functions_, let us observe and not primarily desires are served.
These functions are such functions as the individual has as a member
of every group to which he naturally belongs. Government, then, so to
speak, has no standing of its own. Its proper function is to
facilitate all other functions. Neither individuals nor governments
have any rights as abstracted from the sum of functions which they
essentially are.

If this be true, we can certainly define no one best and eternal type
of government, any more than a fixed and perfect plan of life for an
individual can be defined. Government might be supposed properly to
change according to the functions which from time to time were most
important for the society in question. Social life, under government,
differs from a free and unorganized social life mainly in that a
certain _objectivity_ is acquired in regard to the functions of the
individual. The individual becomes a creature of functions rather than
of desires and needs. Common interests, or the interests of the group
are served, we say; in doing this the individual is made to serve his
own interests, perhaps, but the most outstanding fact is that in this
organized life the _immediate desires of the individual are likely to
be thwarted_. Regularity is put into conduct, and conduct is made to
serve multiple and distant ends. The functions of the individual, left
to the desire of the individual, will seldom be harmoniously
performed. They will lack precisely objective consideration. But in
the organized social life there will also be no perfect order and
harmony, no final balance of functions. Everything is still relative
and experimental. Government is a system in which any one individual
at any moment may gain or may lose. But _on the whole_, under the good
government, both more freedom for the individual and better conditions
and better life for the individual will presumably be obtained than in
any possible disordered or unorganized society. But government will
really add nothing that does not already belong to the functions that
naturally develop in any social group.

The actual functions of governments are, therefore, highly complex,
because it is in some way involved in all the functions of the
individuals themselves. Governments will be judged good or bad in two
particulars: according to the completeness with which t