er.--Evidently, to do this,
it must in all cases be provided with indispensable means, namely:
diplomats, an army, a fleet, arsenals, civil and criminal courts,
prisons, a police, taxation and tax-collectors, a hierarchy of agents
and local supervisors, who, each in his place and attending to
his special duty, will co-operate in securing the desired
effect.--Evidently, again, to apply all these instruments, the
public power must have, according to the case, this or that form or
constitution, this or that degree of impulse and energy: according to
the nature and gravity of external or internal danger, it is proper that
it should be concentrated or divided, emancipated from control or under
control, authoritative or liberal. No indignation need be cherished
beforehand against its mechanism. Strictly speaking, it is a vast piece
appliance in the human community, such as a machine in a factory or such
as organ in the human body. If this organ is the only on that can carry
out the task, let us accept it and its structure: whoever wants the end
wants the means. All we can ask is that the means shall be adapted to
the end; in other terms, that the myriad of large or small local or
central pieces shall be determined, adjusted, and coordinated in view of
the final and total effect to which they co-operate nearly or remotely.

But, whether simple or compound, every engine which does any work
is subject to one condition; the better it is suited to any distinct
purpose the less it is suited to other purposes; as its perfection
increases, so does its application become limited.--Accordingly, if
there are two distinct instruments applied to two distinct objects,
the more perfect they are, each of its kind, the more do their domains
become circumscribed and opposed to each other; as one of them becomes
more capable of doing its own work it becomes more incapable of doing
the work of the other; finally, neither can take the place of the
other, and this is true whatever the instrument may be, mechanical,
physiological, or social.

At the very lowest grade of human industry the savage possesses but one
tool; with his cutting or pointed bit of stone he kills, breaks, splits,
bores, saws, and carves; the instrument suffices, in the main, for all
sorts of services. After this come the lance, the hatchet, the hammer,
the punch, the saw, the knife, each adapted to a distinct purpose and
less efficacious outside of that purpose: one cannot sa