What, then, in the most general way, can we say is the legitimate function or purpose of government? Hocking says that government is the means of assuring the individual that his achievements will be permanent. To this end it puts order into the structure of society. In our view something similar, but not identical with this, is true. We can say that in its complex forms it is in principle only what we found it to be in its primitive or simple forms. _Government is ideally a means of aiding all the functions of every individual._ _Functions_, let us observe and not primarily desires are served. These functions are such functions as the individual has as a member of every group to which he naturally belongs. Government, then, so to speak, has no standing of its own. Its proper function is to facilitate all other functions. Neither individuals nor governments have any rights as abstracted from the sum of functions which they essentially are. If this be true, we can certainly define no one best and eternal type of government, any more than a fixed and perfect plan of life for an individual can be defined. Government might be supposed properly to change according to the functions which from time to time were most important for the society in question. Social life, under government, differs from a free and unorganized social life mainly in that a certain _objectivity_ is acquired in regard to the functions of the individual. The individual becomes a creature of functions rather than of desires and needs. Common interests, or the interests of the group are served, we say; in doing this the individual is made to serve his own interests, perhaps, but the most outstanding fact is that in this organized life the _immediate desires of the individual are likely to be thwarted_. Regularity is put into conduct, and conduct is made to serve multiple and distant ends. The functions of the individual, left to the desire of the individual, will seldom be harmoniously performed. They will lack precisely objective consideration. But in the organized social life there will also be no perfect order and harmony, no final balance of functions. Everything is still relative and experimental. Government is a system in which any one individual at any moment may gain or may lose. But _on the whole_, under the good government, both more freedom for the individual and better conditions and better life for the individual will presumably be obtained than in any possible disordered or unorganized society. But government will really add nothing that does not already belong to the functions that naturally develop in any social group.