the President as a sort of imitation of the solar system.

They were only following the English Whigs, who gave Great Britain its
modern constitution. Not that those Englishmen analyzed the matter, or had
any theory about it; Englishmen care little for theories. It was a
Frenchman, Montesquieu, who pointed out to them how faithfully they had
copied Newton's description of the mechanism of the heavens.

The makers of our Federal Constitution read Montesquieu with true
scientific enthusiasm. They were scientists in their way,--the best way of
their age,--those fathers of the nation. Jefferson wrote of "the laws of
Nature,"--and then by way of afterthought,--"and of Nature's God." And
they constructed a government as they would have constructed an
orrery,--to display the laws of nature. Politics in their thought was a
variety of mechanics. The Constitution was founded on the law of
gravitation. The government was to exist and move by virtue of the
efficacy of "checks and balances."

The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a
living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under
the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It
is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its
functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can have its
organs offset against each other, as checks, and live. On the contrary,
its life is dependent upon their quick co-operation, their ready response
to the commands of instinct or intelligence, their amicable community of
purpose. Government is not a body of blind forces; it is a body of men,
with highly differentiated functions, no doubt, in our modern day, of
specialization, with a common task and purpose. Their co-operation is
indispensable, their warfare fatal. There can be no successful government