ABSTRACT
It is not to say that human will does not influence in any way the arrangement of society; but only that the parts of which it is composed, the action that perpetuates it, are not an effect of its artificial organization, but of its natural structure. The farmer’s art can prune a tree, dispose it on an espalier; but the tree lives and produces by virtue of the laws of plant physics that are superior to the art and to the power of any particular gardener. Likewise, societies are living bodies, endowed with organs that make them exist; the arbitrary action of legislators, administrators, soldiers, of a conqueror, or even the effect of fortuitous circumstances, can influence the manner in which they exist, make them suffer, or heal them; but not to make them live. It is so little the artificial organization that produces this effect that it is in the places where it is the least felt, where it is limited to preserving the social body from the attacks that harm its own action and its development, which societies grow fastest in number and prosperity.
