the countless heterogeneous considerations which affect the
immediate and remote welfare of the whole community. We may
describe the office of the brain as that of _averaging_ the
interests of life, physical, intellectual, moral, social; and
a good brain is one in which the desires answering to their
respective interests are so balanced, that the conduct they
jointly dictate sacrifice none of them. Similarly we may
describe the office of Parliament as that of _averaging_ the
interests of the various classes in a community; and a good
Parliament is one in which the parties answering to these
respective interests are so balanced, that their united
legislation concedes to each class as much as consists with
the claims of the rest."

All this appears to be very just. But if the resemblances between the
body physiological and the body politic are any indication, not only
of what the latter is, and how it has become what it is, but of what
it ought to be, and what it is tending to become, I cannot but think
that the real force of the analogy is totally opposed to the negative
view of State function.

Suppose that, in accordance with this view, each muscle were to
maintain that the nervous system had no right to interfere with its
contraction, except to prevent it from hindering the contraction of
another muscle; or each gland, that it had a right to secrete, so long
as its secretion interfered with no other; suppose every separate cell
left free to follow its own "interests," and _laissez-faire_ lord of
all, what would become of the body physiological?

The fact is that the sovereign power of the body thinks for the