SUFFERING AND THE SOCIAL ORDER

adjustment of parts. It is the symptom of disease. It calls aloud, less for conditional relief, than for reconstruction, reorganization on a new principle.

The State — which is the Community acting as a corporate whole — ^recognizes this fact, e.g. in the " party-system " of govemment, and is aware of its significance. The antagonism which is found to exist between the two main parties in every state — the one standing for the old, the other for the new, the one for Order, the other for Progress, the one for conservation, the other for reconstruction — is apparent only; unconsciously to the individuals themsdves who compose them, they are in subtle co-operation ; both are needed. For just as in the reconstruction of a railway station, which has become almost obsolète because of the development of the commimity-life, it is necessary that, if the tiafi&c is not to be utterly dislocated or stopped altpgether, the old structure should be imderpinned and upheld while the new is substituted piecemeal ; just as the confinement and restraint of the chrysalis-sheath is necessary while the myriad minute agents pull down the larval body and out of the old material build up the imago-body ; so in the successful reconstruction of the social order it is necessary that the status quo should be supported while the foimdations are being relaid, and effective arrangements substituted for obsolète ones ; the old sanctions must be main-