VT ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM 271 



I numity ; and a good Parliament is one in which the parties. 



! answering to these respective interests are so balanced, that their 

 united legislation concedes to each class as much as consists with 

 the claims of the rest." 



All this appears to be very just. But if the 

 resemblances between the body physiological and 

 the body politic are any indication, not only of 

 what the latter is, and how it has become what it 

 is, but of what it ought to be, and what it is tend- 

 ing to become, I cannot but think that the .rea 1 

 force of the analogy is totally opposed to tin- 

 negative view of State function. 



Suppose that, in accordance with this view, 

 each muscle were to maintain that the nervous 

 system had no right to interfere with its con- 

 traction, except to prevent it from hindering the 

 contraction of another muscle ; or each gland, that 

 it had a right to secrete, so long as its secretion 

 interfered with no other ; suppose every separate 

 cell left free to follow its own " interest," and 

 laissez-faire lord of all, what would become of 

 the body physiological ? 



, The fact is that the sovereign power of the 

 body thinks for the physiological organism, acts 

 for it, and rules the individual components with a 

 rod of iron, Even the blood-corpuscles can't hold 

 a public meeting without being accused of " con- 

 gestion " and the brain, like other despots whom 

 we have known, calls out at once for the use of 

 sharp steel against them. As in Hobbes's 



