An exemplification of the natural working of a government founded and administered according to strictest governmental justice may be seen in the growth and in the maintenance of the life of the tree, which may be made to represent the tree of humanity. The tree is a complete community within itself; all its branches and twigs, even to the extremest distance, are dependent upon the same fountain for its controlling life currents that the parts nearer the base are. No single branch can maintain its life independent of the rest. Each separate one must draw its proportion of supplies from the same source and return the stream to its fountain when its demands upon it are completed. This power, starting from a common fountain, is delegated to the various branches for still further and more general distribution; but no branch can set up a distributing process for itself in opposition to the general process. If the branches had the power to set up processes of their own, the inevitable result would be inharmonies in the common order, which would work ultimate injury to all parts connected with the main body. Thus it is with a country. It must possess a common governmental fountain, and all divisions of it must be directly dependent upon the common fountain. No division can be permitted to set up special channels of administration for itself. Each must work in harmony with all others, and all be equally dependent and dutiful to the common head. In such and in only such can harmony prevail and life be continuous.
Having found, then, what the destiny of government must be, and having determined its proper limits and sphere for operation, it becomes still more essential and necessary that the true mainsprings of governmental power shall be recognized, for without this, government would still linger in its age of temporary resorts to get over the constantly arising contingencies of the times. When this recognition takes place, legislation will have accomplished its work, and the vast talent therein expended can be turned into the channels of governmental art. It is to attract the mind to the operation of general principles in nature that we have thus far dealt with the material universe. In advancing into the subtler department of mind, it cannot be for a moment supposed that an entirely new arrangement of principles lies at its base, any more so than that there should have been new rules of nature to introduce the animal or the vegetable. Instead of this having been, it is perfectly demonstrated that the same laws govern in each and all; that is to say, that the same principles of government control them all. Bearing this in mind, we now proceed to the consideration of the operation of principles wherein the human mind comes to assist nature in its strife for perfection, itself joining in the race.
THE PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT.
NO. II.
It was remarked previously that Nature is consistent in all her operations throughout her entire domain; to which may now be added that the nearer the human approximates his rules and methods to those exhibited in the departments of Nature below him, the nearer will he approach to true rules and methods. Arbitrary and dogmatic formulas do not belong to Nature in her free manifestations, nor can they be administered in any of her combinations. In all the uses men may make of the elements of matter, he must comply with the laws of their existence: he cannot frame a law, and then command that Nature shall obey it.
Certain quantities of certain elements will combine and form a compound; but no other proportions of the same elements will combine to form the same compound, and in many cases they will not combine at all, unless certain fixed quantities are adhered to. Again, an effort may be made to unite two or more bodies, and they will be found to be incompatibles; that is, incapable of being united, because each has a stronger self-affinity than for any property existing in either of the other bodies with which they are brought in contact; but to these two or more bodies another principle may be added, which will produce the effect of uniting the whole. It is this principle in nature by which its elements combine and form all the various and diversified manifestations that are visible everywhere. These forms are none of them absolutely independent: they may, by their inherent power, attract other forms to themselves, or be by others attracted; the more complex and distinctly individuated ones being dependent upon those from which they spring for their existence; thus, as was before stated, the animal world is absolutely dependent upon the vegetable world for the protoplasm it must make use of to replace that expended by the animal economy. No animal can take the elements protoplasm is composed of and manufacture it; that process is alone the office of the vegetable world. And thus it is that a complete and infinite system of dependence exists from the lowest form of organic life to the highest; each is necessary to every other, while every one fills a special individual position of its own, and this is because they are all bound together by the same controlling powers or principles of action.
It is readily seen that the principles referred to are the same that are expressed by a common humanity, a universal brotherhood: one is a brotherhood of the elements; the other is a brotherhood of the ultimates of elements, of which mind is a product. Each kingdom has its beginning and culmination, and by the observation of their evolution we must draw the deductions as to what really governs that age of the world, and the special kingdom we find ourselves living in. The beginning of the mineral kingdom was when simple elements began to unite to form compounds; which was when the cooling process had so far progressed as to allow of combination; this process of the uniting and dispersing of elements culminated in the production of the simplest vegetable life, and thus ushered in the vegetable kingdom. In this, again the same process of uniting and dispersing was gone through with that had characterized the mineral. It began as it did, and culminated as it did by producing the next higher, or the animal kingdom, the simplest form of which is a single unit of nucleated protoplasm. Upon this single unit the animal kingdom began to be built. The same process of integration and disintegration continued through countless ages and until a form was produced, which is the ultimate of form in the animal kingdom. This ultimate, man, is the perfection of form that protoplasm can produce, and hence is the grand ultimate of the process of elemental combination first referred to. No other or higher form is possible to be arranged from the elements that the earth is composed of. Therefore, all future advancement to perfection must be in the perfecting process in man, and therefore it is logical to conclude that the same law that governed the beginning, the evolution and the ultimation of each of the kingdoms that produced man, will also govern the beginning, the evolution and the ultimation of the different stages in the perfecting process in him; and not only in the perfecting process as a whole, but in each division of the perfecting process; and this brings us to that part of the process illustrated by government, and to the principles of government which are under consideration.
It will be observed that there is a perfect analogy in the process of evolution that is observed below man, and in that which comes of man. First, there was the elementary unit, which corresponds to what was the governmental unit—the family government. Next, and second, there was the vegetable division, which corresponds to the second order of government—the consolidation of families into tribes. Third, there was the animal division of the process, which corresponds to the amalgamation of tribes into nations. Fourth, there was man, the ultimate of the whole process, containing in him the elementary principles represented by all the preceding forms—in none of which were they all represented as they are represented in him—and he corresponds to the ultimate of the process of governmental evolution, the complete consolidation of nations into one grand nation, as man is the complete consolidation of all animal forms in one grand animal form. His form is the animal form, containing all animal forms. A universal government would be a national form, containing the form of all nations gathered into one grand form. Here it is that the analogy is complete, and Nature is consistent in all her parts and processes, at all times and in all forms observing the simple general principles which so unerringly lead her.
There is, however, one important addition to the processes in which man takes part, over those where principles apply only in the so-called material control. Below man there is nature only. After man there is art added to nature; and it is this power to administer to Nature’s processes, to assist in them, and to remove and replace obstacles to activity in higher channels, that distinguishes man from all previous formations, and which virtually makes him an assistant in the after and higher evolutions of mind, which have, until very recently, been generally considered not of material origin, but which science now demonstrates are purely physical results—are combinations in consciousness of consecutive manifestations of matter. Here we have the ultimate production of the ultimate of the animal kingdom, the mental kingdom, or the kingdom of ideas.
Science also demonstrates that ideas evolve after the same formula which all preceding processes observed, and that all new discoveries of ideas are not discoveries of existing facts, but that they are new truths evolved from preceding forms of truth; or, in other words, that they are higher forms of truth.