up into complex aggregations--in which each element
retains an independent individuality, though held in subordination to
the whole. The atoms of carbon and hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, which
enter into a complex molecule, do not lose the powers originally
inherent in them, when they unite to form that molecule, the
properties of which express those forces of the whole aggregation
which are not neutralized and balanced by one another. Each atom has
given up something, in order that the atomic society, or molecule, may
subsist. And as soon as any one or more of the atoms thus associated
resumes the freedom which it has renounced, and follows some external
attraction, the molecule is broken up, and all the peculiar properties
which depended upon its constitution vanish.

Every society, great or small, resembles such a complex molecule,
in which the atoms are represented by men, possessed of all those
multifarious attractions and repulsions which are manifested in their
desires and volitions, the unlimited power of satisfying which, we
call freedom. The social molecule exists in virtue of the renunciation
of more or less of this freedom by every individual. It is decomposed,
when the attraction of desire leads to the resumption of that freedom,
the suppression of which is essential to the existence of the social
molecule. And the great problem of that social chemistry we call
politics, is to discover what desires of mankind may be gratified, and
what must be suppressed, if the highly complex compound, society,
is to avoid decomposition. That the gratification of some of
men's desires shall be renounced is essential to order; that the
satisfaction of others shall be permitted is no less essential to
progress; and the business of the sovereign authority--which is, or
ought-to be, simply a delegation of the people appointed to act for
its good--appears to me to be, not only to enforce the renunciation of
the anti-social desires, but, wherever it may be necessary, to promote
the satisfaction of those which are conducive to progress.

The great metaphysician, Immanuel Kant, who is at his greatest when
he discusses questions which are not metaphysical, wrote, nearly a
century ago, a wonderfully instructive essay entitled "A Conception of
Universal History in relation to Universal Citizenship,"[1] from which
I will borrow a few pregnant sentences:--

[Footnote 1: "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbuergerlichen
Absic