Therefore, on this point, it is responsible; it must adopt or impose the proper statute, the most suitable social form for strengthening the social instinct, for maintaining disinterested zeal, for the encouragement of voluntary and gratuitous labor.
This form, of course, differs according to different societies; the same charter or constitution is not proper for a church system and a commune, nor for a Protestant church and a Catholic church, nor for a town of one hundred thousand inhabitants and a village of five hundred.

Each association has its own peculiar and distinctive features, which grade it according to its kind, according to its spiritual or temporal aims, according to its liberal or authoritative spirit, according to is small or large dimensions, according to the simplicity or complexity of its affairs, according to the capacity or incapacity of its members: features which within it are both efficient and permanent; whatever the legislator may do, these will remain and will regulate all activity.
Thus let him, in each case, keep this in mind.

But in all cases his office is the same; always, on drawing up and countersigning a statute, he intervenes in the coming conflict between the social instinct and the egoistic instinct; every provision which he enacts will contribute, nearby or at a distance, to the final ascendancy of the former or of the latter.

Now, the legislator the natural ally of the former, for the former is his indispensable auxiliary.

In every work or enterprise of public utility, if the legislator is the external promoter, social instinct is the internal promoter; and on the inner spring becoming weak or breaking, the impulsion from outside remains without effect.