THE NEW LEVIATHAN 395 



plies the expectation of profit, of self-betterment, aug- 

 mentation, or growth, on the part of the contractors; 

 and beyond that, a hope, less clearly defined, of attain- 

 ing some ulterior, larger result. The fulfilment of the 

 contract justifies that hope and keeps it alive. 



We thus reach solid ground, on which to build a 

 biological interpretation of the state. 



The state is clearly not to be identified with the 

 special privileges and immunities of a divinely 

 appointed ruler and his satellites; nor is it a being 

 whose interests stand apart, or on a different footing 

 than those "of its individual constituents. The state is 

 rather a more or less arbitrarily circumscribed sphere 

 of cooperative nature-action and human action; it is de- 

 pendent for its existence on the inventions and dis- 

 coveries, the mutual sacrifice and mutual services of 

 individual citizens, whereby other citizens have 

 attained greater freedom and greater power. 



These servants constitute the state; their exchange 

 of mutual services, conscious or otherwise, is its vital- 

 ity; the conservation of their profits, its growth. In 

 this respect, the state is like any other living organism. 

 The thing, for example, we conveniently call a frog, is 

 in reality a complex action-system, whose various ma- 

 terial parts and organs constitute the physical body of 

 the frog; their cooperative action with one another and 

 with their outer world, is its vitality; the accumulating 

 profits of its exchange is its growth. 



Thus in spite of the nominal boundaries laid down 

 by man, there can be no absolutely exclusive, or in- 

 clusive, boundaries to a state, any more than to any 

 other living being. Its inner life merges imperceptibly 

 into the life of its external environment. 



