ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XLIX 
are interrelated in respect to their conduct. These activities result 
in Institutions. Through them men are associated for a variety of 
purposes. Every institution is an organization of a number of in- 
dividuals, who work together for a common purpose, as, for exam- 
ple, to prosecute some industrial enterprise, to co-operate in the 
pursuit of pleasure, to promote some system of opinions, or to wor- 
ship together under the forms of some religion. All such institu- 
tions constitute a class denominated Operative Institutions. A second 
class are the institutions which man has organized for the direct reg- 
ulation of conduct. These are States and their subordinate units, 
with their special organs of government, and rules for the regulation 
of conduct, called Laws. 
Institutions have been developed from extreme simplicity to ex- 
treme complexity. They are all the inventions of mankind, and 
their evolution has been by minute increments of growth. Their 
invention has been wrought out that men might live together in 
peace and render one another assistance; and gradually, by the 
consideration of particulars of conduct as they have arisen from 
time to time, men have sought to establish justice, that they might 
thereby secure peace. Of the vast multiplicity of institutions— 
forms of state, forms of government, and provisions of law—which 
have been invented, but few remain in the highest civilization, and 
these few have been selected’ by men. Men have thus exercised 
choice. Institutions, therefore, have been developed by invention 
and the choice of the just in the endeavor to secure peace. 
Third. There is another fundamental group of activities through 
which men are interrelated in respect to their thoughts. These are 
the activities of mental intercommunication, and result in Lan- 
guages. Languages, also, are inventions by minute increments of 
growth. Many languages have been invented, and in each language 
many words and many methods of combining linguistic devices have 
been invented. In the languages of the most civilized peoples, but 
few of these survive; and there are spoken by all the peoples of the 
earth but few languages in comparison to the many that existed in 
the early history of mankind; and the method of survival, when 
analyzed, is found also to be choice. Men have chosen the economic 
in the expression of thought. Languages, therefore, have devel- 
oped by invention and choice in the struggle for expression. 
Fourth. There is a grand class of activities by which men are 
interrelated in respect to their designs. Men arrive at Opinions, and 
