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_Jniplies a 

 rpgfrpifH-.ioTi nf the frppflom ^f aHh 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 aoma.l 

 organization, whether simple or complex, is the fact that 

 each member of the society voluntaril 



freedom in certain directions, in_return for the advan- 

 tages which he expects~from association wdth 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__u^-^eeid_c^aja^ corn- 



payable, not so much to the process of organic develop- 

 ment, as to the synthesis of the chemist, byLwhichJndfi- 

 pendent elements ^-re gradually built up into 'complex 



