I.] ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM. 21 



aggregations in which each element retains an inde- 

 pendent individuality, though held in subordination to 

 the whole. The atoms of carbon and hydrogen, oxygen, 

 nitrogen, which enter into a complex molecule, do 

 lose the powers originally inherent in them, when they 

 unite to form that molecule, the properties of which 

 express those forces of the whole aggregation which are 

 not neutralized and balanced by one another. Each 

 atom has given up something, in order that the atomic 

 society, or molecule, may subsist. And as soon as any 

 one or more of the atoms thus associated resumes the 

 freedom which it has renounced, and follows some 

 external attraction, the molecule is broken up, and all 

 the peculiar properties which depended upon its consti- 

 tution vanish. 



Every society, great or small, resembles such a com- 

 plex molecule, in which the atoms are represented by 

 men, possessed of all those multifarious attractions and 

 repulsions which are manifested in their desires and 

 volitions, the unlimited power of satisfying which, we 

 call freedom. The social molecule exists in virtue of the 

 renunciation of more or less of this freedom by every 

 individual. It is decomposed, when the attraction of 

 desire leads to the resumption of that freedom, the sup- 

 pression of which is essential to the existence of the 

 social molecule. And the great problem of that social 

 chemistry we call politics, is to discover what desires of 

 mankind may be gratified, and what must be suppressed, 

 if the highly complex compound, society, is to avoid 

 decomposition. That the gratification of some of men's 

 desires shall be renounced is essential to order ; that the 

 satisfaction of others shall be permitted is no less 

 essential to progress ; and the business of the sovereign 

 authority which is, or ought to be, simply a delegation 

 of the people appointed to act for its good appears to 



