542 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
tion. To this influence is largely due the founding of great nations, and there is probably no one factor in the progress of society more potent than the crystallizing and humanizing effect of bringing great areas and vast populations under a single set of regulative agencies.
But taking for the moment the standpoint of the physiocratic school of writers referred to, and separating the natural forces of society into the two classes, which may be called industrial and governmental, let us endeavor to form an idea of what the result would be if the former alone existed. In the face of the obvious fact that if the latter class were at any moment wholly in abeyance it would immediately resume operations and soon restore the existing duality of conditions, let us make a com- plete abstraction of all this and seek to represent to ourselves the normal result of the industrial forces working alone. Some such attitude has always been tacitly assumed by those who habitually condemn the governments of the world and conceive them to be hostile to society. These misarchists see the benefi- cent influences of natural law in the industrial world interfered with by what seems to them an extraneous power, which most candid persons will probably admit to be in itself, at least as commonly defined, non-progressive or only negatively progress- ive. But the class I refer to take a part and declare it repress- ive and obstructive of progress. The celebrated "parable of Saint Simon" gives perhaps the most extreme expression to this view that has thus far been uttered, but Mr. Herbert Spencer, although he would not abolish government, is unquestionably its severest modern critic, so much so that anarchistic organs openly claim him as their philosopher.
Now if we could imagine that no single member of society would for a moment think of such a thing as the formation of a governing body, and conceive of each of its members as simply pursuing his individual ends in a private way; taking possession, each as best he might, of some portion of the soil, cultivating it for his own use, exchanging his surplus products with others who, choosing as now other occupations, should produce other
