Now, it is the true function of government to establish, these common or general modes of procedure, termed laws, among masses, and to punish departures from them. Government is thus the great social harmonizer of these otherwise necessarily conflicting and mutually interfering human energies.
Government coördinates, harmonizes, concentrates the efforts of multitudes. It does this by establishing and maintaining order, an orderly arrangement of human activities—arrangements, methods of procedure, which are adapted to the wants of the community, and into which men's activities flow freely and spontaneously, and without compulsion (except in the case of violators of law), because of their adaptation to the public wants.
But now, what constitutes order? What is its essential nature?
The answer is, that order is the harmonious relation of parts in a whole; and parts can have no orderly, that is, symmetrical and harmonious, relation to each other, except through their relation to a common centre.
Order is the subordination of things, of things lower to something that is higher; and subordination is the ordination or ordering of parts under something that is above—something to which the rest must conform, that is, must form themselves or be formed with it, in harmony with it, if order is to result.
This something is thus, of course, that which is central—the chief element in the group; that which is the most prominent feature, and which gives character to all subordinate parts.
It is thus clearly evident that the very essence of government, of order, of harmony, of subordination, is the grouping of individual parts around centres; of these compound units as larger individuals, around some higher centre again, and so on, until a limit is prescribed by the very nature of the thing thus organized into an ascending series of compounds.
This method of grouping and organizing parts into wholes, is, as we have already seen, the divine method; and, of course, being such, as has also been said, it is seen in every created object—in minerals, plants, animals, and in the systems of suns and planets.
It is the method of man's bodily organization, and much more, if possible, is it the method of his mental organization. Man's mind consists of powers of affection and thought. His affections, loves, desires, or whatever they may be termed, all group themselves around some leading motive, some ruling passion, which is central for a part or the whole of a lifetime. All minor motives and ends of action are subordinate, and only subservient as a means to satisfy the central, dominant passion. They revolve around it, like satellites around their primary, or like planets around their sun.
His thoughts, likewise—the method of his intellectual operations, obey the same law. In every subject which he investigates, he marshals a multitude of facts around central principles or conclusions. He shuts them up under a general, chief, leading fact or law. A number of conclusions, again, are marshalled around one still more general and comprehensive, and thus he mounts up into the highest and most universal principles. All the knowledge stored away in his mind is thus organized, almost without his consciousness, into groups of lower and higher facts and details, ranged under or around their central principles.