There can be no merely arbitrary laws. It is necessary to bear in mind that we are now considering the province of the legislator, who ought to enact no law without an end. "Civil legislative power," says Rutherforth (B. II, c. vi, s. 10), "is not in the strict sense of the word an absolute power of restraining or altering the rights of the subjects: it is limited in its own nature to its proper objects, to those rights only in which the common good of the society or of its several parts requires some restraint or alteration. So that whenever we call the civil legislative power, either of society in general or of a particular legislative body within any society, an absolute legislative power, we can only mean that it has no external check upon it in fact; for all civil legislative power is in its own nature under an internal check of right: it is a power of restraining or altering the rights of the subjects for the purpose of advancing or securing the general good, and not of restraining or altering them for any purpose whatever, and much less for no purpose at all." There are, therefore, no arbitrary laws which fulfil the end of law. Doubtless the true objects of society and government may be mistaken by him who sets up to be law-maker, or if those objects are properly appreciated, the means for advancing them may be mistaken. It is not wonderful that in a matter which demands the highest wisdom, many should try and fail. It becomes important to inquire what are the true ends of society and government? Man is a gregarious animal--a social being. He may exist in solitude, but he cannot enjoy life: he cannot perfect his nature. Those who have watched and studied closely the habits of those irrational animals, who live in communities, as the ant, the bee, and the beaver, have observed not only a settled system and subordination, but the existence of some wonderful faculty, like articulate speech, by which communication takes place from one to another; a power essential to order. Man, the highest social animal in the scale of earthly being, has also the noblest faculty of communication.