GOVERNMENT (OF. government, gouverne ment, Fr. gouvernemcnt, from Lat. gubernare, to govern, steer, from Gk. Kvflepriiv, kybernan, to steer). In the most general sense, any orderly arrangement and management of affairs, espe cially in human society. It is in this sense that we employ the term, in such widely related ex pressions as the divine government, household government, and the like. Specifically the term is most commonly used as a condensed expression for political government, or the authoritative regulation of the affairs of a. political community or State. Though often confused with the State itself, government is more properly conceived of as the external political organization of the State, as the mode in which, and the agencies by which, the State puts forth its energies. A State may thus completely change its political organ ization without losing its political identity, as the French nation has in little more than a cen tury passed through all the phases of govern ment from absolute monarchy to republican de mocracy, without a change in itsessential character and unity as a State. Indeed, we may con
ceive of a State as existing without any govern ment, the authority of the latter in the preserva tion of order and the enforcement of obligations being supplied by mutual cooperation and good will on the part of the citizens. It is at the realization of such a State, and not at the disso lution of all civic and social relations, that the philosophic anarchy of the present day is aimed. The imaginary 'state of nature,' pictured by Rousseau and other writers of the eighteenth century, involves, on the other hand, the com plete negation of the State, i.e. of all civic rela tions, as well as of government. It does not seem likely that humanity will ever be able to dispense with either. With the growing com plexity of human affairs, the necessity for the organization of society in political communities grows ever greater, and there are no indications of the disappearance of those predatory instincts of human nature upon which the necessity for organized government is based.