274 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
THE FIVE-FOLD FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT 
By W J McGEBH, LL.D. 
I 
‘Pec. like organisms, are products of development. 
Governmental organizations, like most others, are increasingly 
designed and shaped in the light of conscious experience. Thus, the 
constitution of the United States epitomized the lessons of history so 
far as recognized by its framers, whereby the instrument became the 
embodiment of governmental practise and theory gained through known 
experience. Naturally, by reason of the ability of the framers and the 
stress under which they wrought, the instrument is notable—certainly 
among the most notable ever produced, whatever be thought of Glad- 
stone’s view as to the divinity of its inspiration. Naturally, too, the 
framers specified most clearly those governmental powers with which 
they were familiar and which they most desired to adopt: and, no less 
naturally, their action was guided quite as much by the wish to elimi- 
nate that which they thought objectionable as by the aim to perpetuate 
that which they deemed desirable. Seeing that government is an ex- 
pression of law, their first care was to provide for the framing of laws, 
the second to provide for the execution of these laws, and the third to 
provide for the interpretation of law; and in this way arose what came 
to be known as the “three coordinate branches” of the United States 
government. The branches are indeed coordinated, though they are far 
from coequal, since the power of creating the third is entrusted to the 
second “ by and with the consent” of a part of the first; yet they by no 
means constitute the entire government—as becomes clear in the light 
of earlier phases of social organization made known largely since the 
instrument was framed, no less than in that of discussion before and 
during the framing of the constitution. 
Early in that primitive social type in which tribal organization rests 
on consanguinity traced in the female line, the elder-woman is both law- 
giver and judge, while her elder-brother acts as an executive in case 
of need, and the two jointly or severally exercise administrative author- 
ity throughout the clan; later the elder-women become priestesses or 
seeresses still giving and interpreting the clan laws, and their elder- 
brothers form an avuncular council of gradually increasing executive 
and administrative powers; yet at every step all primary power is 
imputed to a mystical pantheon of which the beldames are only vicars 
and the sages merely indirect agents. Tn the next stage of development 
