[2] The faith may of course exist in minds which would absolutely repudiate the theoretical form here propounded for it. No one could have had a more ardent actual faith in the reality of the greater self than Bentham and Mill. But Society and the State present themselves at first sight as indefinite multitudes of persons. Institutions are many-sided facts; and an unreflective citizen could hardly say of what he takes them to be composed. And though law and custom approach more nearly to what we commonly understand by a “will,” yet they again are apt to be regarded as a sort of dead external weight with which the living volition of the ordinary man has little or nothing to do. Our purpose, therefore, is to explain what is meant by saying that “a will” can be embodied in the State, in society, in law and institutions; and how it is possible for the individual, as we know him, to be in an identity with this will, such as continually to vary, but never wholly to disappear. How can a man’s real self lie in a great degree outside his normal self, and be something which he only now and then gets hold of distinctly, and never completely? 2. We will begin (1) by pointing out the analogy between the groups or systems of which our intelligence is composed, and the groups or systems which make up the fabric of society, and we will then go on (2) to exhibit them as up to a certain point aspects of the same fact. (1) We may note two degrees of connection between the members of a whole, which we may call “Association” and “Organisation.” (i.) When two individuals are so connected that where you find the one you expect to find the {157} other, they may be called associates. And any kind of habitual grouping, from a gang of thieves to a scientific or philanthropic institution, may be called an Association. Owing probably to the verbal force which it borrows from the verb “to associate,” the term “association” implies the intentional coming together of units which have been separate, and which may become separate again. The word “Society,” on the other hand, has not this verbal force, and although an “association” may call itself “a society,” yet “Society” as such is not spoken of as an “Association.” When we speak of “Society” we do not emphasise the aspect of being put together out of elements which exist apart, and therefore we habitually apply the word to that natural grouping, which, at any rate, we do not normally think of as purposely put together and liable to be dissolved again. When the State is treated as an Association, a definite theory of its nature is implied, such as is involved in Herbert Spencer’s comparison between it and a joint stock company.