Implied in all this is a view of the place of voluntary associations in the community the significance of which I do not wish to minimize. I am, in fact, denying that they owe their existence to the state, or that the latter is entitled, by means of its agents, to prescribe the terms upon which they can live. The special place of the state in the great society does not, in my judgment, give it an unlimited right to effect that co-ordination which is its function on any terms it pleases. The principles of a legitimate co-ordination bind the state as much as they bind any other body of men. Each of us finds himself part of a vast organization in the midst of which we must seek the realization of desire. We cannot attain it alone. We have to find others with kindred desires who will join hands with us to proclaim the urgency of their realization. There is no other way to the attainment of that end; and an attitude, therefore, like that of Rousseau, who denied the legitimacy of any voluntary associations, fails altogether to take account of the elementary facts of social life. Such bodies, indeed, must run in the leading-strings of principle, but the question of what that principle must be is not one the state alone is entitled to make. For the latter is not justified in preventing the expression of desire; it is justified only in preventing the realization of desire by violent means. It must tolerate the expression of experience it hates because it is there, as a state, to satisfy even the experience it cannot understand. We must not, in fact, allow ourselves to fall into the error of believing that opinion which is antagonistic to the state-purpose is unworthy to survive. The state-purpose, like any other, is expressed through the agency of men. They may misinterpret it; they may, consciously or unconsciously, pervert it to their own ends. To leave them free to settle the limits of free association would be to leave them free to settle what criticism of their work they were prepared to permit. That is a power which could not safely be entrusted to any body of men who have ever operated as a government.