[16] Misperformance and neglect of duty do not clearly include cases of usurpation with corrupt motives; hence the addition of this clause to the definition. Some usurpations may of course be defended as involving high and unselfish motives, and hence free from corruption. [17] Mr. Seeley has shown, of course, that no actual despotism, so-called, really conforms to this conception, but for purposes of argument, at least, the assumption may be permitted to stand. [18] _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xix (1904), p. 673. [19] _Cf._ C. Howard, “The Spirit of Graft,” _Outlook_, vol. lxxxi (1905), p. 365. [20] _Outlook_, 65:115 (May 12, 1905). [21] _Political Science Quarterly_, vol. xviii (1902), p. 188. [22] _Atlantic_, vol. xcv (1905), p. 781. [23] J. E. C. Bodley, France, bk. iii, ch. vi, p. 306. CORRUPTION: A PERSISTENT PROBLEM OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE III CORRUPTION: A PERSISTENT PROBLEM OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LIFE In its broadest significance, corruption has been defined as “the intentional misperformance or neglect of a recognised duty, or the unwarranted exercise of power, with the motive of gaining some advantage more or less directly personal.” Evil of this sort may occur not only in the state, but also in the church, the family, in business associations, and every other kind of social body. One may infer from the nature of corruption itself that if developed to an extreme degree it will cause the dissolution of any organisation affected by it. Every social body requires as a prime condition of its existence a certain subordination of individual interest to the general interest. Corruption essentially means the preference of the former to the latter. If self-interest continuously grows more potent while group interest _pari passu_ declines, evidently the social organisation so affected will weaken and finally die. “The king by judgment establisheth the land: but he that receiveth gifts overthroweth it.” Universally triumphant corruption, therefore, would destroy the body from which it had drawn the sustenance for its own parasitic life. Anarchy would be far preferable to the extreme logical consequences of corruption. For anarchy seeks to destroy only the compulsory political forms of human society, leaving men free to associate voluntarily in all other ways, whereas ultimate corruption would loosen every social bond and reduce humanity to the state of nature as Hobbes conceived it:—_bellum omnium contra omnes_.