The task before us now is to think out the way in which the group method can be a regular part of our political system—its relation to the individual on the one hand and to the state on the other. No man should have a share in government as an isolated individual, but only as bound up with others: the individual must be the unit, but an individual capable of entering into genuine group relations and of using these for an expanding scale of social, political and international life. The best part of functionalism is that it presents to us the Service State in the place of the old Sovereign State. This has two meanings: (1) that the state is created by the actual services of every man, that every man will get his place in the state through the service rendered: (2) that the state itself is tested by the services it renders, both to its members and to the world-community.[122] The weakness of functionalism, as so far developed, is that it has provided no method for all the functions of man to be included in the state. The essence of democracy is the expression of every man in his multiple nature. To sum up: no one group can enfold me, because of my multiple nature. This is the blow to the theory of occupational representation. But also no number of groups can enfold me. This is the reason why the individual must always be the unit of politics, as group organization must be its method. We _find_ the individual through the group, we _use_ him always as the true individual—the undivided one—who, living link of living group, is yet never embedded in the meshes but is forever free for every new possibility of a forever unfolding life. ----- Footnote 120: The French syndicalists avowedly do not want democracy because it “mixes the classes,” because, as they say, interests and aims mingle in one great mass in which all true significance is lost. Footnote 121: See p. 184. Footnote 122: This is the basis of Duguit’s international law—the place of a state in an international league is to be determined directly by services rendered. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XXXI POLITICAL PLURALISM AND THE TRUE FEDERAL STATE -------------- IN the last two chapters I have taken up the two fundamental laws of life—the law of interpenetration and the law of multiples. (1) Sovereignty, we have seen, is the power generated within the group—dependent on the principle of interpenetration. (2) Man joins many groups—in order to express his multiple nature. These two principles give us federalism.