To sum up: a true federalism cannot rest on balance or group-rights or consent. Authority, obedience, liberty, can never be understood without an understanding of the group process. Some of the advocates of guild socialism oppose function to authority and liberty, but we can have function _and_ liberty _and_ authority: authority of the whole through the liberty of all by means of the functions of each. These three are inescapably united. A genuine group, a small or large group, association or state, has the right to the obedience of its members. No group should be sovereign over another group. The only right the state has to authority over “other” groups is as far as those groups are constituent parts of the state. All groups are not constituent parts of the state to-day, as the pluralists clearly see. Possibly or probably all groups never will be, but such perpetually self-actualizing unity should be the process. Groups are sovereign over themselves, but in their relation to the state they are interdependent groups, each recognizing the claims of every other. Our multiple group life is the fact we have to reckon with; unity is the aim of all our seeking. And with this unity will appear a sovereignty spontaneously and joyfully acknowledged. In true federalism, voided of division and balance, lies such sovereignty. ----- Footnote 123: Quoted by Duguit. Footnote 124: It must be remembered, however, that while in the Civil War we definitely gave up the compact theory held by us since the Mayflower compact, yet we did not adopt the organism theory. The federal state we have tried and are trying to work out in America is based on the principles of psychic unity described in chapter X. The giving up of the “consent” theory does not bring us necessarily to the organic theory of society. Footnote 125: Duguit says that the United States confers the rights of a state on a territory. No, it recognizes that which already exists. Footnote 126: “The word ‘and’ trails along after every sentence. Something always escapes.... The pluralistic world is thus more like a federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom.” “A Pluralistic Universe,” 321–322. Footnote 127: When they say that the passion for unity is the urge for a dominant One, they think of the dominant One as outside. Footnote 128: One of the pluralists says, “I cannot see that ... sovereignty is the unique property of any one association.” No, not sovereignty over “others,” but sovereignty always belongs to any genuine group; as groups join to form another real group, the sovereignty of the more inclusive group is evolved—that is the only kind of state sovereignty which we can recognize as legitimate. (See ch. XXIX on “Political Pluralism and Sovereignty.”) Footnote 129: See ch. XV. Footnote 130: