274 ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM vi 



fact that each member of the society voluntarily 

 renounces his freedom in certain directions, in 

 return for the advantages which he expects from . 

 association with the other members of that society. \f 

 Nor are constitutions, laws, or manners, in ultimate 

 analysis, anything but so many ^xpressed or JtrjOi,- 

 plied, jsojitracts between the members of a society 

 to do this, or abstain from that, s 



It appears to me that this feature constitutes, 

 the difference between the social and the physiolo- 

 gical organism. Among the higher physiological- 

 organisms, there is none which is developed by. 

 the conjunction of a number of primitively inde-* 

 pendent existences into a complex whole. The- 

 process of social organisation appears to be com- 

 parable, not so much to the process of organic 

 development, as to the synthesis of the chemist, 

 by which independent elements are gradually built 

 up into complex aggregations in which each 

 element retains an independent individuality, 

 though held in subordination to the whole.// The 

 atoms of carbon and hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, 

 which enter into a complex molecule, do not 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 neutralised 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 



