20 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [i. 



ring the latter, hand over my purse, we have virtually 

 made a contract, and I perform one of the terms of that 

 contract. If, nevertheless, the highwayman subsequently 

 shoots me, everybody will see that, in addition to the 

 crimes of murder and theft, he has been guilty of a 

 breach of contract. 



A despotic Government, therefore, though often a mere 

 combination of slaveholding and highway robbery, never 

 theless implies a contract between governor and governed, 

 with voluntary submission on the part of the latter ; and 

 d fortiori, all other forms of government are in like case. 



Now a contract between any two men implies a 

 restriction of the freedom of each in certain particulars. 

 The highwayman gives up his freedom to shoot me, on 

 condition of my giving up my freedom to do as I like 

 with my money : I give up my freedom to kill Quashie, 

 on condition of Quashie s giving up his freedom to be 

 idle. And the essence and foundation of every social 

 organization, whether simple or complex, is the fact that 

 each member of the society voluntarily renounces his 

 freedom in certain directions, in return for the advan 

 tages which he expects from association with the other 

 members of that society. Nor are constitutions, laws, or 

 manners, in ultimate analysis, anything but so many 

 expressed or implied contracts between the members of 

 a society to do this, or abstain from that. 



It appears to me that this feature constitutes the dif 

 ference between the social and the physiological organism. 

 Among the higher physiological organisms, there is none 

 which is developed by the conjunction of a number of 

 primitively independent existences into a complex whole. 

 The process of social organization appears to be com 

 parable, not so much to the process of organic develop 

 ment, as to the synthesis of the chemist, by which inde 

 pendent elements arc gradually built up into complex 



