Outside war-time, the state appears to touch the ordinary man’s life directly only when it requires him to pay the expenses of its upkeep or when he provokes the attention of the police. But on the other hand, when a man joins a Trade Union or a religious society it is because the new association bears some sort of vital and immediate relation to his life. The most authentic interests of life are those which move men to join together voluntarily for their defence and promotion; and for the purpose of social development, the associations that grow in this fashion are at least of no less importance to the common run of men than the state. It is no longer tolerable, therefore, that in the general management of the affairs of a community these associations should be virtually ignored in deference to a doctrine which presupposes that the state and the individual are the sole terms of political theory and practice, and that such associations exist within the commonwealth only on sufferance of the state. Second, it has some bearing upon our present argument that these associations may conceivably come at any time into conflict with the interests of the social whole. A trade union may, for instance, make claims which are incongruous with the well-being of the general public; churches have been known to claim advantages which are inconsistent with the freedom and welfare of other religious societies. With the multiplication of societies within the commonwealth, and especially in view of the prospective great increase of strength in the case of trade unions, it is entirely essential that such bodies should be required directly to participate in the responsibility of promoting the general social good. They should—in their character of associations charging themselves with certain vital though particular interests—be introduced into the official management of public affairs. So long as they live more or less isolated and unco-ordinated lives they remain in danger of becoming antisocial in effect; and the only remedy is to provide for them a clearing-house in the conduct of which they are directly implicated; and once more, the state is already to hand and its machinery should be so ordered as to enable it to discharge this office. Theoretically our movement is away from the “amoeba” conception of the national state, which regards it as an independent unicellular affair with the central state organisation as its nucleus, to a conception of it as multicellular, and finding a practical unity in the contribution of all its cells to the activity of a common brain. This may be bad biology but that is no argument against its political soundness.