s to each class as much as consists with
the claims of the rest."

All this appears to be very just. But if the resemblances between the
body physiological and the body politic are any indication, not only
of what the latter is, and how it has become what it is, but of what
it ought to be, and what it is tending to become, I cannot but think
that the real force of the analogy is totally opposed to the negative
view of State function.

Suppose that, in accordance with this view, each muscle were to
maintain that the nervous system had no right to interfere with its
contraction, except to prevent it from hindering the contraction of
another muscle; or each gland, that it had a right to secrete, so long
as its secretion interfered with no other; suppose every separate cell
left free to follow its own "interests," and _laissez-faire_ lord of
all, what would become of the body physiological?

The fact is that the sovereign power of the body thinks for the
physiological organism, acts for it, and rules the individual
components with a rod of iron. Even the blood-corpuscles can't hold a
public meeting without being accused of "congestion"--and the brain,
like other despots whom we have known, calls out at once for the
use of sharp steel against them. As in Hobbes's "Leviathan," the
representative of the sovereign authority in the living organism,
though he derives all his powers from the mass which he rules, is
above the law. The questioning of his authority involves death, or
that partial death which we call paralysis. Hence, if the analogy of
the body politic with the body physiological counts for anything, it
seems to me to be in favour of a much larger amount of governmental
interference than exists at present, or than I, for one, at all desire
to see. But, tempting as the opportunity is, I am not disposed to
build up any argument in favour of my own case upon this analogy,
curious, interesting, and in many respects close, as it is, for it
takes no cognizance of certain profound and essential differences
between the physiological and the political bodies.

Much as the notion of a "social contract" has been ridiculed, it
nevertheless seems to be clear enough, that all social organization
whatever depends upon what is substantially a contract, whether
expressed or implied, between the members of the society. No society
ever was, or ever can be, really held together by force. It may seem
a paradox to say that a slave