be effected among this diversified life. Without this order
--without systems or common methods of action in the thousand affairs
which concern every community, it is evident that there must be
_dis_order, confusion, and clashing. The activity of each individual,
and of each class of individuals, will come into collision, and be
repressed by the like activity of others. It is utterly impossible, in a
community where there is no order, no mutually understood arrangement of
relations, duties, and pursuits; in other words, where there is no
government; it is impossible, under such conditions, for individuals, if
even of the best intentions, to live and do as they wish. For many wills
must come into conflict, unless they can be harmonized, unless they have
a mutual understanding and consent among each other that there shall be
common and well-defined methods of procedure, under the countless
circumstances in which men _must_ act together, or not act at all.

Now, it is the true function of government to establish, these common or
general modes of procedure, termed laws, among masses, and to punish
departures from them. Government is thus the great social harmonizer of
these otherwise necessarily conflicting and mutually interfering human
energies.

Government cooerdinates, harmonizes, concentrates the efforts of
multitudes. It does this by establishing and maintaining _order_, an
orderly arrangement of human activities--arrangements, methods of
procedure, which are adapted to the wants of the community, and _into_
which men's activities flow freely and spontaneously, and without
compulsion (except in the case of violators of law), because of their
adaptation to the public wants.

But now, what constitutes order? What is its essential nature?

The answer is, that order is the harmonious relation of parts in a
whole; and parts can have no orderly, that is, symmetrical and
harmonious, relation to each other, except through their relation to a
common centre.

Order is the _sub_ordination of things, of things lower to something
that is higher; and _sub_ordination is the ordination or ordering of
parts _under_ something that is above--something to which the rest must
_con_form, that is, must form themselves or be formed _with_ it, in
harmony with it, if order is to result.

This something is thus, of course, that which is central--the chief
element in the group; that which is the most prominent feature, and
which gives cha