es constructed out of human beings who, on account of personal
interest, habit, and constraint, or through inclination, conscience,
and generosity, co-operate according to a public or tacit statute in
effecting in the material or spiritual order of things this or that
determinate undertaking. In France, to-day, there are, besides the
State, eighty-six departments, thirty-six thousand communes, four church
bodies, forty thousand parishes, seven or eight millions of families,
millions of agricultural, industrial, and commercial establishments,
hundreds of institutions of science and art, thousands of educational
and charitable institutions, benevolent and mutual-aid societies, and
others for business or for pleasure by tens and hundreds and thousands,
in short, innumerable associations of every kind, each with a purpose
of its own, and, like a tool or a special organ, carrying out a distinct
work.

Now, each of these associations so far as it is a tool or an organ is
subject to the same law; the better it is in one direction, the more
mediocre it is in other directions; its special competency constitutes
its general incompetence. This is why, among developed nations, no
specialized organization can replace another in a satisfactory manner.
"An academy of painting which should also be a bank would, in all
probability, exhibit very bad pictures and discount very bad bills. A
gas company which should also be a kindergarten would, we expect, light
the streets poorly and teach the children badly." [2201] And the
reason is that an instrument, whatever it may be, a mechanical tool, or
physiological organ, or human association, is always a system of pieces
whose effects converge to a given end; it matters little whether the
pieces are bits of wood and metal, as in the tool, cells and fibers,
as in the organ, souls and understandings, as in the association;
the essential thing is the convergence of their effects; for the more
convergent these effects, the more efficient is the instrument in the
realization of its end. But, through this convergence, it takes one
direction exclusively and cannot take any other; it cannot operate at
once in two different senses; it cannot possibly turn to the right and
at the same time turn to the left. If any social instrument devised
for a special service is made to act additionally for another, it will
perform its own office badly as well the one it usurps. Of the two works
executed by it, the fir