if we
work together effectively we must have rules and working agreements,
methods of cooeperation, and these, whatever name we may give them, will
have the force of constitutions and laws. The great cooeperations, on
which the welfare of society depends, involve social organization. Even
if the form which this takes should be largely economic, it would have
political force and significance. Man is a political animal; it is his
nature to live politically; and, as Horace says, you may drive out
nature with a pitchfork, but she is sure to come back. And the same
weaknesses of human nature which infested the old forms of organization
would be found in the new ones, unless human nature itself were
regenerated.

Those who would destroy political society on account of its abuses are,
therefore, guilty of the same foolishness as that of the man who burned
his house to get rid of the rats. Doubtless the rats all escaped and
were ready to enter, with reinforcements, into the new house as soon as
it was builded.

The same reasoning applies to ecclesiastical anarchism. Those who,
because of the defects of church organizations, would abolish the
churches, are equally unpractical. For it is not only true, as we saw in
our first chapter, that religion is a primal fact of human nature, it is
equally true that religion everywhere has a social manifestation. The
same impulse which moves men to worship, draws them together in their
worship.

Any deep or strong emotion makes human beings congregate. Just as a
flock of sheep huddle together when they are frightened, so men, when
deeply moved for any cause, seek one another. As the impulse of religion
is one of those by which men are most deeply moved, it always brings
them together.

So long as religion keeps the form of fear it produces this result; when
fear is succeeded by more grateful emotions, and men begin to have some
sense of the goodness of the Power they have been blindly worshiping,
then their gladness and gratitude bring them together. Religion,
therefore, in all lands and ages, has been a social interest; indeed, it
has been the strongest of the bonds uniting human beings. To demand a
religion which should have no social expression is to fly in the face of
nature, and forbid causes to bring forth their normal effects. Wherever
there is religion men will be associated, and their worship and their
work will be carried on under forms of social organization. Anarchism is
no