Now, in science it may or may not be the case that the connection which has led to a discovery enters permanently as a discernible factor into the structure of knowledge. The re-organisation of experience may sweep away the steps which led to it. But in the living fact of society this is not so. Its many sides are actual and persist, and the emphasis laid from time to time on the principle of each--_e.g._ on positive law, on family ties, on economic bonds--merely serves to accent an element which has its permanent place in the whole. Thus, there must always be family ties and economic bonds. But at one time everything tends to be construed {258} in terms of kinship, at another time in terms of exchange. And the tendency means a difference of actual balance between the functions as well as a different theory. The positive and negative connection of elements like these, the true place and limit of each, is permanently rooted in human nature, but may be elucidated by the explicit logic of their attempt and failure to give the tone to the whole social fabric. It follows that the social whole grows, like a great theory, in adequacy to the needs which are its facts; and the dissatisfaction of the will with its own expression, in other words, the contradictions which practical intelligence is continually attempting to remove, becomes more like suggestion than flat contradiction--or change, as we say, becomes less revolutionary. It may seem to be a difference between the social whole and a scientific theory that the former, as it grows, creates new difficulties, by creating new and freshly contradictory matter, as in the social problems of civilisation; while the latter, as we imagine, deals with an unchanging experience. But this distinction is less true than it appears, and the comparison with the growth of a theory will always throw light on the true nature of the will and its continuous effort to satisfy itself. 2. Right or Law may be taken in the widest sense as including the whole manifestation of Will in an actual world--“the actual body of all the conditions of freedom,” [1] “the realm of realised freedom, the world of mind produced out of itself, as a second nature.” [2] It is a merit of the German {259} term “_Recht_” [3] that it maintains the connection between the law and the spirit of law, [4] and almost of itself prohibits the separation between positive law, and will, custom or sentiment, which underlies such a theory as Austin’s. [1] Hegel, _Philos. of Mind_ (E. Tr.), p. 104. Cf. defs. quoted from Green, p. 203 above. [2] _Rechtsphil_., sect. 4. [3] Cf. the Greek’s idea of “_nomos_.” [4] See ch. ii. above on Montesquieu and Rousseau.