62. It is true that there is no greater difficulty about supposing it to be exercised in the dissolution than in the establishment of a government, indeed not so much; but the act of first establishing a government is thrown back into an indefinite past. It may easily be taken for granted without further inquiry into the conditions of its possibility. On the other hand, as the act of legitimately dissolving a government or superseding one by another has to be imagined as taking place in the present, the inquiry into the conditions of its possibility cannot well be avoided. If we have once assumed with Hobbes and Locke, that the authority of government is derived from a covenant of all with all,--either directly or mediately by a subsequent act in which the covenanted society delegates its powers to a representative or representatives,--it will follow that a like act is required to cancel it; and the difficulties of conceiving such an act under the conditions of the present are so great, that Hobbes' view of the irrevocableness of the original act by which any government was established has much to say for itself. If the authority of any government--its claim on our obedience--is held to be derived not from an original covenant, or from any covenant, but from the function which it serves in maintaining those conditions of freedom which are conditions of the moral life, then no act of the people in revocation of a prior act need be reckoned necessary to justify its dissolution. If it ceases to serve this function, it loses its claim on our obedience. It is a παρέκβασις. [1] (Here again the Greek theory, deriving the authority of government not from consent but from the end which it serves, is sounder than the modern.) Whether or no any particular government has on this ground lost its claim and may be rightly resisted, is a question, no doubt, difficult for the individual to answer with certainty. In the long run, however, it seems generally if not always to answer itself. A government no longer serving the function described--which, it must be remembered, is variously served according to circumstances--brings forces into play which are fatal to it. But if it is difficult upon this theory for the individual to ascertain, as a matter of speculation, whether resistance to an established government is justified or no, at any rate upon this theory such a justification of resistance is possible. Upon Locke's theory, the condition necessary to justify it--viz. an act of the whole people governed--is one which, anywhere except in a Swiss canton, it would be impossible to fulfil. For practical purposes, Locke comes to a right result by ignoring this impossibility. Having supposed the reality of one impossible event,--the establishment of government by compact or by the act of a society founded on compact,--he cancels this error in the result by supposing the possibility of another transaction equally impossible, viz, the collective act of a people dissolving its government.