Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/616

598 of individual members, the utmost direct pressure, consciously exerted by the community, is of the feeblest efficacy, and, at the best, indefinite and precarious in the highest degree. The sphere of action of the community, with respect to the former, or the acts of men, is that of law. The sphere of action with respect to the latter, that is, the thoughts and feelings, though not exclusive of acts, is morality. The relations of these two spheres to each other will be investigated in the next chapter.

In the mean time, the following conclusions have been reached: It appears that the characteristic energy of every state consists in the reciprocal influence upon each other of the corporate whole, and the constituent elements, in respect of certain definitely assignable classes of human action. These classes of action will either have reference to things or physical substances, as objects of ownership or use, or have no such reference. The actually subsisting relationship to each other of the corporate whole, and the constituent personal elements, depends upon the form of government which casually happens to prevail.

The influence of the constituent personal elements of the state upon its governing authority, as representing, at any epoch, the corporate whole, is exhibited, first, in the selection (whether conscious or unconscious) of that governing authority according to its specific modifications; and, secondly, in the incessant control (conscious or unconscious) of that authority, by which the limits of its free action are, at every moment, defined. The influence of the governing authority, on the other hand, on the constituent personal elements of the state—that is, upon its so-called "subjects"—is exerted through two separate channels: one that of administration; the other that of law. In other words, the purposes of government are effected either through the medium of occasional and, as it were, spasmodic injunctions, or through general rules.

The limits, within which any given governing authority can venture to issue occasional injunctions, must be determined, as has already been seen, by its actual relations to all the constituent personal elements of the state. These limits will never be precisely determined in language, though they will be marked with tolerable exactness in fact, and instinctively appreciated by all persons concerned in either enlarging or protecting them.

The determination of these limits of administrative authority might be looked upon as forming one great branch of the general rules which constitute the other field of the appropriate activity of the government. It composes a large portion of what is called "constitutional law." The anomaly, however, attaching to this extension of the term "law" is obvious, inasmuch as, if the name "law" be given to the body of general rules through which a government exerts its appropriate activity, the same term "law" cannot be simultaneously