The end of the State, then, is the end of Society and of the Individual--the best life, as determined by the fundamental logic of the will. The means at its disposal, _qua_ State, always partake of the nature of force, though this does not exclude their having other aspects as well. Taxation may have the most reasonable and even the most popular purpose, yet the generality and justice of its incidence, and the certainty of its productiveness, can only be secured by compulsion. No State could undertake its work on the basis of voluntary contributions. A universal end, we might say, is indeed not a mere general rule; but you cannot carry out a universal end in a plurality of units--and a set of human individuals is always in one aspect a plurality of units--without enforcing general rules. 4. Here, then, we have our problem more closely determined than in the previous chapters. There we saw, in general, that self-government can have no meaning unless we can “really” will something which we do not always “actually” will. And we were led to look for a clue to our real or implied will in the social spirit as incorporated in laws and institutions, that is to say in Society as a {187} working whole reflected in the full system of the consciousnesses which composed it. We supposed ourselves prepared, then, it would seem, to do and suffer anything which would promote the best life of the whole--that maximisation of our being which, from the nature of our real will, we saw to be imperative upon us--a demand implied in every volition and from which we could never escape.