J-^ '■J?13QNVS01^^ '//jai .>10SANCElfx^ > gfol. ? .^ ^'JJU3N^S0?^^' %83AlNn-: <^ ^ s 0>^ "^0:^ CAIIF0% ,UIFi 't?Aavaar •''JliJ^(v■^. o 't^AQVQtlli'i'' •'.tUJfiV y^aaAiNrt- ^lOSANCE ^:k, s^NX^f^Ni iilVJjO't^ %/ ^ 91 ■■•M- mwn'. ifT^iwrnrr 5 ~ I ^ %u:)Nvsoi- '^ddAiNli-; ^j:?]ims. ■/jaiAIHlV3VV> -s>^lUBRAR\ m — ^ P ^ m ? ! ■'^'uujiiyj-iO'^ i — --■ -- >clOSANCEL AllFO^^ ^S;OFCAIIFO%, c 15=^1 ii&: ■•S©! < DC CO nr*-^ -^r- LARGE REDUCTION IN PRICE. All our books hitherto listed at $2.00 per vol. are now reduced to $1.50 per vol. Social Institutions $1.50 The Will and its World 1.50 Psychology and the Psychosis . . 1.50 In this reduction are also included the nine vols, of Commentaries on Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. See price list at the end of this volume. SIGMA PUBLISHING CO. Social Institutions In their Origin, Growth, and Interconnection, Psychologically Treated. BY DENTON J. SNIDER, Litt. D. \ SIGMA PUBLISHING CO., St. Louis, Mo., 210 Pine St. (Tor Sale by A. C M'Clurg & Co., Booksellers, Chicago, Ills.) Copyright, by !>. J. SNIDER, 1901. NIXON-JONES PTG. CO., 2r5 PINE ST., ST. LOUIS. HM51 Table of Contents. PAGE. ^' Introduction 5-43 5, SECTION FIEST. The Secular Institution 44 CHAPTEB FIB ST. The Family 59 CHAPTER SECOND. Society 164 CHAPTER THIRD. The State 33(3 317142 i CONTENTS. SECTION SECOND. The Religious Institution . . . . 349 I. The Positive Religious Institu- tion 367 II. The Negative Religious Insti- tution 408 III. The Evolution of the Religious Institution 426 ' SECTION THIRD. The Educative Institution .... 493 GHAPTEB FIRST. The Public School 504 GHAPTEB SECOND. The Special School 513 chapter third. The Universal School. . . . . 521 IJSfTR OD UC TION. The title page of the present work endeavors to suggest its purpose, which we may here ehxbo- rate a little. To set forth the origin, growth, and inter-connection of Social Institutions is the design ; we shall place the stress upon their inter- connection. These Institutions are, in general, the Family, Society, State, Church, and the Educative Institution, all of which are to be unfolded, ordered, and shown in their unity. As the chief interest is to see how these Insti- tutions are connected and correlated, we shall have to pay special attention to the method. This requires a certain order which runs through and joins together the whole book ; it also re- quires a given nomenclature which indicates in the word the connecting thought. Still we h(^pe to 6 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. render the following exposition intelligible to any reader who is willing to think a little. It is iui- l^ossible to unify the science without some use of technical terms, which, however, we shall try to make plain either in advance or when the need for them arises. But all cannot be grasped at once; the thought may have to grow a while. It ought to be here stated that the term 8oci- ologij, w^hich may seem to many the natural desig- nation of the present subject, has been on the whole avoided. For this there are several rea- sons. Sociology has hitherto derived its method from Physical Science, largely from Biology ; our method comes from the opposite direction, from Psvchology. Moreover, the great promot- ers of Sociology have, in the main, discarded Free-Will, Herbert Spencer for instance declaring it to be "an illusion." But the present book makes all Institutions, Society included, spring from Free-Will ; our .science is, or seeks to be, a philosophy of freedom in its total circuit. Then again Sociology is usually confined to Society as such, or the Economic Order; we intend to em- brace in our work the whole institutional world. So the word Sociologij would call up a wrong set of mental associations, quite antagonistic to our l)urpose; we shall have to set it aside in the present exposition. We might call the science TnnHtutionologij, were the word not too outrage- ous, being both a hybrid and a vc oquf[AMJtjli the objective Will, which is the Institution, must will something, must have a content, purpose, 32 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. end. But what is this content, purpose, end of the objective "Will or Institution? It is just Will, can be ultimately nothing else. The grand purpose of the Institutional "World is to make the Ego as "Will a fact, a positive existence; the Institution is itself a Will whose end is to estab- lish Will in its complete process, and thus to constitute a living, active entity in the world, not simply as individual, but as universal Will. The Institution, therefore, being a Will whose content or end is to establish, to safeguard, and to actualize Will, that is, all Wills whatsoever, has the characteristic of universality. This means not merely the common wish or volition of man}'^ or all Wills as particular individuals ; the universal Will is what really secures, renders possible, and indeed creates the particular Will. The Institution, accordingly, returns to the individual Ego as Will, and makes it actual, renders it, first of all, a Will active in the world, existent, endowing it with a universality which is objective. For example, let us take the State as an In- stitution. All the individuals in the State may have a common Will, they may to a man desire to annex a certain territory, but their particular Wills in this matter, however strong, cannot be made actual without the Institution whose pur- pose and function are to make Will actual. The State must be present to secure and to actualize IN TB OD UC TION. 33 the common Will, it is not merely this common Will. Government does not exist through public opinion, but public opinion exists actually through government. To be sure, a certain form of government, or a certain way of administering a certain form of government, may depend upon public opinion, but government as such is before public opinion, and is what renders the same possible, and finally actual. The truth is, the Institution is implied in every act of the Ego as Will ; I, this individual, when I Avill the simplest act, am calling forth the Institutional World. This exists in advance, as already said, still I none the less have to create it for my- self. It is often said that men must associate to- gether, the human being has a native impulse to form a social order of some kind. The indi- vidual, in every act of his particular Will, calls for the universal Will, which alone can give true objectivity to his Will. The crudest social organization of the lowest savages has in it this element, and the highest Institution of civilized man shows the same fundamental fact. The science of association has to do essentially Avith the Institutional Will. In the moral sphere, which has gone before the sphere of Institutions (see its place and treatment in TJie Will and the TFb?'M), we saw the individual controlled by his sense of duty ; he 3 34 ISOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. willed to do the right which was also universal, nay, he rose to willing the good of all even against his own individual right. Still this good was his own conception of the good, it had reality only in himself, it was subjective, and so was subject to his own Ego. Thus in form it was still individual, not universal; it was not actualized in the world and commanding not merely his Ego but all Egos, it was not objective and institutional, having the authority of the living; Institution. I must indeed obev mv own conception of the good, which can be called my Universal, but my Universal may not be another man's Universal, and so is not universal at all. The Good must be made actual, existent, eternal ; it must be given an active life in the world, inde- pendent of any particular Will, it must live when I am dead, it must be elevated out of its sub- jective condition into an Institution. In such terms we seek to bring before our- selves the thought of the Will as a spiritual real- it}', having realized itself not simply in a thing, not even in a moral action merely, but as a new Self in the world, or a new Person as it were, whose function is to will the individual Will and thereby to make real the particular Person in a kind of universal Person. This reality, as already indicated, is better expressed by the term actual- ity when the latter is once fully understood, since it suggests the activity of the Will as its essence. INTRODUCTION. 35 I, this puny iiuliN idual, am lo find in the Institu- tional World my elder and more powerful brother, indeed quite all-powerful, Avhose universal Will saves, safeguards, and finall}' actualizes my indi- vidual Self. We say that this Institutional World is a spiritual realm, a veritable spirit-world, not visible as a material object or as a thing of Nature, yet the most solid fact of existence. What is man with- out the Social Order, without the State, Family, Church, Art, Literature, Science? All these belong to the Institutional World, are the invis- ible spirits dwelling in it, wdiich we are now going to conjure, trying to make them assume shapes for the inner eye, for Thought, of which indeed they are the primal creation. The realm of freedom is the Institutional World, wdiose whole nature is freedom made actual, not as a caprice, not even as a subjective command, but as an objective fact. The imme- diate, impulsive Will is not free, is not self- determined, but is determined by a feeling or impulse, which, though internal, is properly external to the free Will. The moral Will is subjectively free, but not completely, not actually free; the Stoic may be free in chains, or as a slave, but he cannot act as a freeman, his free- dom having no sphere of, action, no world to act in. But the Institutional World may be said to be just the sphere of the freeman, its chief func- 36 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. tion is to establish his free "Will. It is true that the imperfect forms of Institutions manifest freedom imperfectly ; but the whole development of the Institutional AVorld from the dawn of History, the whole moyement of Ciyilization is to perfect the free Institution. The end toward which History is moving is just the complete actuality of freedom. The Institutional Will, therefore, is truly the free "Will, being one with the Institution, whose essence is the actualizing of free Will, the making it an active, living power in the world. The individual Will is, accordingly, not free till it is made valid by the universal Will which is not subjective, but existent, actualized in an Institu- tion. We may note again the three kinds of free- dom here designated: the capricious, the moral, and the institutional ; the last alone is true free- dom, since the Will therein is determined b}' itself, even from the outside world. For the ex- ternal Institution, as already said, is a Will, and a Will whose end, purpose, content is to render Will valid. That is, when the particular Will of the individual is w^illed by the universal Will, it must be free, for how can it escape? Freedom has become the very necessity of the Will; my free act, being made also the act of the Insti- tution, or the universal Will, becomes univer- sally free, being now the act of the universal Person as it were. Thus in the present sphere INTRODUCTION. 37 Freedom and Necesisity are no longer two con- flicting irreconcilable opposites, but are harmo- nized ; Necessity has joined hands with Freedom and compelled it to be. But in all lower stages of Will the dualism appears, must appear ; an imper- fect Freedom is always imperfect through an out- side Necessity. The student is now to see that every act of his individual Will, even the humblest, ideally implies its completion, which is actually the Institutional World. If I make a toothpick, I have realized my will in a small object for some finite end ; but this realization of my Will, were it completed, would itself be Will; my act of volition, being the objectifying principle, must finally objectify itself as a whole ; the act, the process must be- come the object, when it has fully realized itself. My Will, having realized itself in a toothpick, has shown its nature to be self-realization ; it has to make itself a reality in the world, and this reality of itself is not a material object, but a Will which is active likewise, an actuality, an Institu- tion. Thus the Ego as an act of Will shows a going forth out of itself, a separation from itself; it is its (jther, it makes itself object. Such is the fundamental self -separation involved in all Will. But this object, separated by Will from itself, is (inally itself, namely the oljjcctivc or actualized Will. Herein the Ego as Will has returned into 317143 38 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. itself, or, after going forth, it has found itself; through the stage of self-alienation it moves into self -reconciliation in the realm of Institu- tions. So we bring to an end this account of actual- ized WiJl as the direct psychical source of the in- stitutional world. Drawino; an analoo:y from embryology, we may call it the psychical em- bryo of Institutions, their seed in the soul of man. This stage we must distinguish from the Family, which is the institutional embryo, that IS the germinal Institution from which are derived all the rest. Or, taking the illustration from biology, we may say that the primal psy- chical cell of Institutions is actualized Will, but the primal institutional cell itself (which is the psychical cell in its first actuality) is the Family. The reader will, of course, understand that these are but illustrations of the thing, not the thing itself, which is not a physical object but the Self, Ego, and is ultimately to be grasped in its own right, as it is in itself, and not through an analogy or illustration. Actualized "Will is a thought, which is finally to be seized in its purit}", that is, by the Thinking which creates it purely. XII. Historical. Already the statement has been emphasized that the present work makes no claims to be a Sociology in the ordinary sense of the term. To be sure, it is our opinion that, as INTBODUCTION. 39 the old Political Economy has broadened itself out into Social Science, so the latter will have to broaden itself out into Institutional Science, In fact, sions are not wanting' that this movement has already begun. Social Science cannot know itself without knowing at the same time State, Church and School. Sociology traces its name and origin to Comte, who places it at the culmination of his six great sciences. With him it clearly depends upon physical science, or rather is a physical science; in fact he seemed more inclined at one time to call it Social Physics than Sociology, and made it the second division of Organic Physics, of which Physiology (Biology ) Avas the first. On the same general line Sociology is carried for- ward by Herbert Spencer, notwithstanding his differences from Comte, and through Spencer it has passed down to the present time, amid a good many amplifications, deflections and pro- tests. Nearly all recent sociologists unite in say- ing that Sociology must take Psychology as its starting-point and not Biology ; even Spencer says something of the kind i n spite of his practice to the contrary. But when we come to look into the Psychology of the sociologists, we find it to be usually Physiological Psychology, that is, more biological than psychological. What, then, is gained by the substitution? Here, in- deed, lies one of the main diificulties of present 40 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Sociolog'y ; it has not yet found out quite how to set itself in order. The result is its votaries have given themselves up almost wholly to experi- mentalism, to special studies of small patches which at last form monographic mountains, to unorganized observations which constitute an amorphous undisciplined mass of particulars, at most the crude materials of a science in the future. But cannot we too have a little order in our present life, or are we condemned to live in everlasting chaos that coming generations may enjoy the cosmos? We confess that we have tried to run a new line through this Science of Human Association from beginning to end, a line that does not pass through Comte and his successors, though the value of their work and the enormous impe- tus given by them to the study of Institutions must be always duly recognized. This line prop- erly reaches back to the old Greek thinkers, Plato and Aristotle, both of whom have left great insti- tutional works, for such we must deem Plato's liepubJic and Aristotle's Politics. Still the}' have no completely actualized Institution which secures Free-Will, since both disregard it in imporant cases, Plato for instance by his communistic scheme and Aristotle by his advocacy of slaver3\ Passing at once to the great thinkers of our own age, we naturally begin Avith Kant, who has had a profound and lasting influence upon ]\Ioral INTRODUCTION. 41 Science but who never rose to an adequate con- ception or treatment of Institutional Science. Fichte, his immediate successor and the promul- gator of subjective idealism, could not by means of such a doctrine do much with objective Insti- tutions, though he treated of them in different portions of his career. But the greatest in this German series is Hegel, who has more pro- foundly expressed and developed the institu- tional idea than any other one of the world- famous thinkers. This is specially seen in that part of his system which he calls Objective Spirit, and which, in our opinion, is the most fruitful portion of his philosophy. Thus we draw our institutional line through Hegel from whom are derived most valuable thoughts and suggestions. He calls the State "the actuality (WirkUchkeit) of the substan- tial Will, " and again " the actualization ( Fe?'- wirklichung) of freedom." (Phil des liechts s. 306 and 311.) What use we make of this thought has already appeared and will continue to appear throughout the present book. But here we have to note his limitation. He applies this thought to the State, but not to the whole institutional world, not even to the entire sphere of the Secular Institution, at least not clearly and distinctly. Still further, Hegel has no devel- oped Religious Institution and no dcnelopcd Educative Institution organically connected 42 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. with his system. Both must be added to and unfolded from the germinal thouo-ht which he has given. He has devoted a large work to Eelig- ion as such, but in that work the Religious Insti- tution has a very subordinate part, though it certainly appears. He discusses the Church in some paragraphs externally appended to his treatise on the State (see Phil. desRechts, s. 325), which fact shows it to have no place in his organ- ized system of Institutions. As to education, he has many weighty remarks about it scattered throughout his works, but no Educative Insti- tution. The science of Institutions, therefore, after developing into and through Hegel, must again emphatically develop out of him. Such is the highest use to which he or any great thinker can be put. He is not to be battered down by argumentation from without directed against him, but is to be unfolded from the inside into a higher reality. The great thinker usually suffers a double mistreatment — from his foes and from his friends; but he is not to be externally refuted by the one set, nor is he to be internally crystal- lized by the other. AVhat Hegel saj's he did to or rather did for Spinoza, must be done for Hegel himself. He states that he " elevated Spinoza's doctrine of Substance into the higher point of view,'' and did not undertake to refute it as a false system. Ho made it generate the INTRODUCTION. 43 Conception ( Begriff) , which was his own higher doctrine. Thus he connects the movement of his own thought with that of Spinoza (see his Logik, s. 9-11) and also with that of Kant. Such is Hegel's principle, that of development, and certainly he is not to be excluded from the work- ing of his own principle. The philosophic blight comes w^hen the disciple turns literalist, rehears- ing the categories of the master without makinof them over into himself and transcending them. And we may add that Hegel's dialectical method must also be transformed and become a psj^cho- logical method, before it can be emploj-ed for the science of Institutions, as the latter is here conceived. For such a purpose the psycliical process itself must be taken; that is, the inher- ent process of the Self alone can penetrate and order the works of the Self, to which Institutions belong. An alien physical or metaphysical method can never fraternize with or even reach into the institutional soul and its movement. Only that within us which is like Institutions can assimilate them. The psychical process above mentioned, which moves through and organizes the institutional world we have already designated as the Psychosis. (For a fuller treat- ment of this subject, we may be permitted to refer to our special work. Psychology and (he P.syr/iosis, Introduction, et passim). SE C TION FIRS T. — THE 8E C ULAE INSTITUTION'. The sphere of Social Institutions begins with what we here call the Secular Institution, or the secular institutional world, which has three main forms — Family, Society, State. The idea of secularity is, in general, the idea of terrestrial existence ; it suggests that which belongs to life here and now ; it pertains to the temporal element, rather than to the eternal, wherein lies an implied contrast with the Keligious Institu- tion. The Secular Institutions (for we shall also use the plural to indicate the di^dsions) are not Per- sons, cannot be called Egos, though they be forms of Free- Will actualized, whose end is ultimately to secure Free-\Yill. Family, Society* (44) THE SECULAB INSTITUTION. 45 State, though not Persons, may be called Per- sonifications in the strict sense of the term ; they are made by the Person to act as a Person in Avilling Free- Will. The essence of secularity is the individual Self institutionalized, made object- ive and universal — a Self willing the freedom of all particular Selves, though these have also to will it, and to be perpetually re-creating it that they all be free. Herein we may see the ground- plan of all human association. Thus in the Secular Institution I create or re-create the universal Will or Person at its center, which is my act of Personification in the sense above given. But in the Religious Institution the universal Person at its center creates me, and the whole universe besides — and that is His act of Personification (or Person-making). I am to submit my individual AYill, first of all, to His universal Will, which, however, is to will my freedom . Manifestly both Institutions, the Secular and the Religious, are forms of actualized Will whose end or content is Free Will, hence both are classed as Institutions. Yet they are two diverse, yea two opposite forms of actualized Will, the one coming from the human or finite Ego, and the other coming from the divine or absolute Ego. The general movement, accordingly, of the Secular Institution is that it starts with the in- dividual Will, then unfolds into the objective 4(3 .'SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. form or organism of itself, which is Will actual- ized and at work in the world, whose end is to secure, to complete, and to vivify the individual Will, bringino; the same to its ultimate fulfillment. Thus the Ego as Will reaches its true being and enforces itself as an actual existence, at the same time being made universal, for all. For example. Society (as the Economic Institu- tion) starts with the individual AVillintheformof appetite or bodily need, which calls forth just this Social Order or Will actualized for the end of satisfying the wants of the body and other wants. Thus man must satisfy his appetite not immediately, but through the Social Institution, which in turn is evoked just through his wants, and which is, therefore, their end, or the ultimate ground of their being. That is, through his wants the individual is compelled to be social, to make Society, to live a universal life in order to exist as an individual. The Will of man is, in the first place, immedi- ate, gifted with the power of objectifj'ing itself, of making itself into something outside of itself, which act is the primal assertion of self. Equally valid is the second stage of the Will, which must be able to suppress itself, to hold itself back from its own immediate act, Avhereby it separates within from itself, and, so to speak, puts down itself. The third stage shows the Will in full possession of itself just through this power of THE ISECULAR INSTITUTION. 47 self -suppression ; it now a.sserts itself not imme- diately and impulsively, but with. its reserved strength of self-control, Tiie foregoing process is the psychical move- ment of the Ego in all individual Will, which takes the form of Desire, Impulse, Motive. Every Institution starts in the human being with some Desire, which is first immediate, sec- ondly is inhibitory of itself, then thirdly inhibits the inhibition and returns to itself, therein at- taining to mastery of Desire. (For a fuller account of this process of Desire see our Will and its World,]). 105, 117, etc.) Now it is through this process of Desire that the individual develops into and participates in the institutional world. He desires a loaf of bread which is the })roperty of another, so he inhibits his immediate Desire or Impulse to seize it till he earns it and receives it from the Social Whole, through which he inhibits his own inhibition and takes the bread. Thus his indi- vidual Will, here his Desire, is institutionalized, is made to pass through the social alembic before it can be gratified. In this way all Desires or all individual Wills can be satisfied (relatively speaking) by first satisfying the Institution (Society) whose function is just to satisfy the individual Will in the form of Desire. In like manner we may consider sexual Desire. As immediate or as natural passion it nmst be 48 SOCIAL ISSTITUTIONS. inhibited ; but this inhibition is removed through the Institution, the Faniii}^ which transfigures physical Desire into domestic Love. Thus rises out of the sensuous, immediate, par- ticular Will a new Will, whose end is to bring forth the freedom of the person in and throuo:h the Institution, leading all individuals into the way of the universal life, which is institutional. The preceding process also includes the three grand stages of "Will, the psychological, the moral, and the institutional. The immediate form of Will is purely psychical and has no moral character; but when the inhibition comes in, morality has appeared, for I suppress my imme- diate Desire in view of some ideal end or of some duty ; my higher self perchance puts down my lower self. Finally, when this ideal end is actual- ized in an Institution, Ave have reached the grand culmination of the movement of all Will, the end which includes all other ends. The Secular Institution, has, accordingly, to actualize the secular Will of man, to transform the immediate sensuous being of the individual in his daily life and occupations. Secular existence is devoted to makino; a livins:, to raising a family, to performing the duties of a citizen, to following a vocation. Such employments go back to some form of individual Desire which is t® be elevated and made institutional ; whereby THE SECULAR INSTITUTION. 49 not one man, but all can have their Desires and can be therein free, of course through the Institution, whose object is just to secure this freedom. Again at this point rises the contrast between the secular and the religious worlds. St. Crispin, making a shoe and selling it to get his bread, per- forms a secular act, though he be a saint, and is through such an act a member of the Secular Insti- tution. But St. Crispin making a shoe and giving it to the poor at the command of God performs a religious act and is a member of 'the Religious Institution, since he yields up his own immediate Will and its product to another Will, the highest, which subordinates his shoemaking to quite a new end. Now, the Saint's Will is to subject itself and all its works to the Absolute Will, and from this act of self-renunciation springs his religiosity, or perchance his saintship. Still we must see that the Saint also just in such a deed has fulfilled his individual Desire, which is to subject his individual Desire to the Absolute Will. Thus we behold the dualism in the religious Will as contrasted with the sec- ular Will ; the one actualizes itself in an Institu- tion which vindicates and guarantees the individ- ual Will as such (secular) ; but the other actu- alizes itself in an Institution which makes valid the subjection of the individual Will through itself (religious). Still we are to see that both Institutions have the one great ultimate end 4 ^(^ SOCIAL lySTirUTIONS. which makes them institutional; both are actu- alized Free AYill which wills Free "Will. Such is the general thought of the Secular Insti- tution as actualized Will, which is now to be seen unfolding itself into Family, Society, State, which are not passively distinct, but are in a process with one another. All these Institutions look after the reproduction of the Person, the exist- ence and the perpetuity of the Self, which is the sacred thing, or when more profoundly seen into, is the only thing in this universe. The Person must first Je (through the Family), then must live (through Society), finally must live free (through the State). Deeply inter-connected are these three Institutions, forming, as it were, a triple interlinking chain of three psychical rings — each a Psychosis in itself, yet all three toofether a Psvchosis. Before passing to the special treatment of each, we shall seek to emphasize their salient characteristics, as well as their unity, by way of introduction, hoping thereby to impress upon the mind of the reader in advance their inter- connection, which is the main purpose of the present exposition. I. The Family. This is the Institution whose end is to secure the Eeproduction of the Person simply and immediatel3% as a total individual. Through this Institution the individual is first brousht into the institutional world, and is reared THE SECULAR INSTITUTION. 51 to participate in the same. Through the Family the human being begins to exist by the deed and care of others, the parents, and from this purely external starting-point he enters the long road of his unfolding into a free man. The Family, then, is that form of actualized "Will whose object is to bring forth into the world a Free Will, creatino- the same in a Person and starting it off on its career of self -development. Thus in the Family also we must see the Institution as actual- ized Free Will, whose ultimate end is to secure Free Will, in the present case by bringing it into existence, that is, into an institutional existence. The Family is, accordingly, the real genus or generic principle generating and thus preserving humanity in its infancy ; it is the Institution as creative, creating the individual as Person and starting him in his physical and also in his insti- tutional life. But it is also the creative Institu- tion as creative of all other Institutions, carrying its genetic energy through the whole institutional world. We may deem it the primordial institu- tional cell, source of all that follow ; it is truly the potential Institution which is to realize itself in the forthcoming development. II. Society. This is the Institution whose end is to secure the Reproduction of the Person as physical and institutional individual through him- self, through his own activity, which realizes 52 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. itself ill property. That is, the individual work- ing in and through Society, now reproduces him- self, his own body primarily, and also his own environing world of wealth and property. Food, raiment, and shelter come to him not imme- diately, but through the Social Institution, which, however, must be set in motion by his effort. He must give to it what it gives back to him. The Family presents to him (as a child) food, raiment, and shelter, without his own activity ; Society makes such a present to him only through his activity in some form. Thus the social gift is a mediated one, while the do- mestic gift is an immediate one. Society is that form of actualized Will which has first to make Free Will a reality in the thing or in the material realm which thereby becomes Property. Surrounding the individual everywhere is a world of Property, which is the existence of the Person in the mate- rial object. Here too the social Institution must be seen to be actualized Free Will, whose ultimate end is to secure Free Will, in the present case by guarding the life of the individual from the many vicissitudes of Nature. III. The State. This is the Institution whose end is to secure the Reproduction of the Person through the universal Will in the form of Law. The individual working in and through the State, is under the protection of the Law, THE SECULAR INSTITUTION. 53 which is the formulated command to secure his Will. The State is, then, that form of actual- ized Will, which explicitly and consciously de- clares its own principle of actualized Will in the Law. The Secular Institution becomes, so to speak, conscious of itself in the State, and also utters that consciousness of itself in its ultimate end, which is freedom. For in the State man becomes, or is to become, consciously free, free through the Law and Institution. The State, knowing its own purpose to be actualized Will which is to secure Will, can now go back and secure Family and Society, which are otherwise helpless and implicit forms of ac- tualized Will. This fact is expressed in the usual formula that the function of the State is to secure Person and Property, as both are inse- cure without the State returning to them and safe-guarding them through its self-conscious purpose uttered in the Law. Such are the three forms of the Secular Insti- tution — Family, Society, State. In all three, as above formulated, we may observe the com- mon end, the Reproduction of the Person; this Person being given as the germ or the potential unit of humanity, is to be unfolded into com- plete institutional life. But the Reproduction of the Person takes different shapes in the different Institutions ; in the Family he is immediately reproduced, is born as an individual Will; in 54 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Society lie is reproduced through himself in the external world, which he appropriates or makes his Property ; in the State he is reproduced as willing his own self -reproduction in the Lair. Hence the Person is not fully reproduced till he develops into his institutional heritage, taking it up into his spirit and making it internal. In brief, Ave may say that the Person is born in the Family, is realized (/'es, thing) in Society, and is actualized in the State (acfus, pertaining to the Will). The Secular Institution, accordingly, takes the seedling Ego, and nurtures it into the full stature of the Person as a domestic, social, and political being. Thus each (the Person and the Secular Institution) reproduces the other in and through the other. Nor must we stop with conceiving these three forms of the Secular Institution as simply united in a common principle, giving, as it were, a fixed or dead result. We nmst see them active, and so uniting themselves by their innermost psychi- cal process, which is the Psychosis, showing the three stages — immediate, separative and return- ing. The careful reader will have already felt or perchance consciously observed this movement in the preceding exposition. For the Family shows the Person immediately reproduced ; Society shows the Person separating himself within as Will and externalizing himself as Prop- erty ; the State shows the Person returning uoon THE SECULAR INSTITUTION. 55 himself and securing himself and his activity through the Law. The returning principle of the State we can see expressed in the formula : the State is that form of actualized Will whose end is to secure the actualization of Will. It is the Law whose content is to safeguard the Will both as inner Person and outer Property, and it is the State which makes and administers the Law. We may add here that the Family is the immediate, implicit, potential principle out of which all Institutions unfold as their germ, as their primal reproductive source; it generates not only Persons but Institutions. We may here repeat the fact that each form of the Secular Institution starts with the indi- vidual Will as Desire. The sexual appetite pro- pels man into the Family, the bodilj' wants call forth the Social Order, the impulse of the Will to freedom makes for the State. Now all these Desires are not to be gratified individually and directly, but through the Institution. Their immediate gratification would be destructive of Free-Will as universal, and man would drop back into a condition of violence. Hence the individual Will in every form of Desire must be institutionalized, ere even the purpose of that Desire can be attained, and men can live together in freedom. But just at this point the element negative to the Secular Institution and to all Institutions 56 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. enters and asserts itself. The individual Will by virtue of its freedom can refuse to be insti- tutionalized, and can follow its own immediate spontaneous Desire, which destroys the freedom of others. Thus a destroying principle comes into the institutional world at its very source, namely the individual Will. Hence each Secular Institution will have within itself a descending stream, a receding movement which tends to carry it back to the beginning in mere individual Desire, and thus to reduce man to barbarism. All modern society is known to have this retrogressive current in its bosom ; indeed with this is its chief battle. Man is for- ever lapsing from civilization to savagery, and the migration backwards never ceases. But there is also the, counter current, the movement forwards out of savagery to civiliza- tion, which is just the advance of the institutional world. In fact we must see that the mentioned descent of Institutions is not only the counter- part but the necessary condition of their ascent ; the two are parts of one process. Without the fall, there can be no rise ; without something to overcome, there is no overcoming. All progress, all evolution has in it a negative antecedent or co- efficient, which is not to be left out of the account. History, recording construction cannot omit de- struction without destroying itself. And in the institutional world, alongside of human ameliora- THE SECULAR INSTITUTION. 57 tion runs a strange infernal, Stygian river of human deterioration. Yet both are factors of the one vast, all-encompassing social process, and both must be reckoned with in any com- plete exposition of the present theme. In the Family, State, and Society, therefore, we must expect to find this negative movement, which will even organize itself against the Insti- tution — an Institution to destroy the Institution. In the Family there will be a reversion to mere sexual appetite ; in Society a reversion* to pure individual greed manifested alike in rich and poor; in the State a reversion to brute Will whose end is to violate Person and Property. The result is that inside the Institution there is a grand descent, a fall backward to its very beginninof. Accordingly in each Secular Institution we shall have the positive, the negative, and the evolu- tionary stages, which together make its constitu- tive process as a form of actualized Will. Once more we may glance back and take a brief survey of the three Secular Institutions apart and together. Through the Family the Person gets to be, through Society he gets to live, through the State he gets to live a freeman. Thus the Secular Institutions give birth, main- tenance, freedom, not simply as natural, but as institutional. Varying the expression somewhat, we may say : the Family wills the Free-Will to 58 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS, be born, Society wills the Free-Will to be sus- tained, the State wills the Free-AVill to be Free- Will. Thus the State turns back to the others and secures them along with itself as Free-Will. Here it may be well to repeat once more that the ideal end of the whole institutional world is Free-Will actualized, or the more and more complete actualization of freedom. CHAPTER FIRST.— THE FAMILY. The Family has long been recognized in a general way as the first of man's Social Institu- tions, foundation and source of the rest. We may indeed call it supremely the creative Institu- tion, in which takes place the genesis of both man and of his Institutions. It is the primordial genetic unit, out of which are born both the Person and the Institutional World, or the indi- vidual subjective Self and the universal objective Self (as Institution). We must not, however, forget its immediate psychical starting-point, which is the Will, in the present case the Will as sexual desire, which drives man into the Family. But this Will as desire has as its ideal end freedom or Frec-Will 60 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. which actuahzes itself in an Institution, primarily that of the Famil}^ whose lower forms may be simply Will actuahzed, but whose destiny is to be Free-Will actualized, that is, an existent, objec- tive Free-Will which secures Free- Will in all the members of the Family- The Family is that Institution which brings a Free-Will into existence, not only physically but morally and intellectually ; it, therefore, can be seen to be an actualized Free-Will itself, that is, a Free-Will existent, objective, whose end is to will Free-Will. This does not mean that such an end always lies consciously in the parent of every child, though it may in certain cases. But in general, the Family being the primary Institution, has the institutional end as implicit, unconscious, potential; as instinct, as emotion, as love. The individual through love becomes a member of the domestic Institution, and sur- renders himself to its end ; yet in this self -sur- render he wins his freedom. The physical presupposition of the Family is the sexual individual, in whom is manifested Nature's deepest dualism, that of sex. At the same time the sexual individual longs to transcend his half ness and to become whole through one of the opposite sex. Thereby he shows himself as generic or generative — not merely individual but also species, reproducing himself as individual. Thus he is not merely a man, but ideally man- THE FAMILY. 61 kind. Upon this ideal element in sex the do- mestic Institution is built, and domestic love has in it the double ingredient, physical and institu- tional. The end of the Family, then, as actualized Free-Will, is the reproduction of the human indi- vidual as a new Free-Will in the world. In and through the Family the child is to be begotten, to have nurture (both pre-natal and post-natal), and to receive its first education, till the Educa- tive Institution can take it and carry forward its training;. Through the Institution of the Familv the child is not simply born, but is born into the world of Institutions, and begins its career as an institutional being. The destiny of the child is to become an inde- pendent individual, specially independent of the Family which has reared him. Thus the Family, starting with the individual, has returned to the same, being the instrument of his re-creation. But this independent individual must in turn enter the Family and re-create that ; therein he wills into existence that Institution which has willed him into existence. With such a content in his life he is truly ethical, possessing and prac- ticing the primary institutional virtue. Biologically the Family has a close correspond- ence with the plant, which starts with the seed, blooms and unfolds into stem, flower, fruit, and then returns to the seed, its starting-point. 62 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. ' Such is the vegetable cycle of Reproduction, which bears such a striking analogy to the domes- tic cycle, beginning with the reproductive indi- vidual and returning to the same, not simply through Nature however, but through the Insti- tution. If the Family corresponds to the plant. Society bears more resemblance to the animal, and the State has its likeness to the Ego, being the self-conscious Institution. Thus the Family is to institutionalize or make ethical the sexual individual. Starting^ with de- sire, he is not to gratify it immediately, but through the Institution. He must inhibit sexual propensities till they be transformed by their institutional end in the Family. Sensuality de- stroys the Family on one side, celibacj' destroys it also on the other ; indulgence and prohibition can be equally negative to domestic life. Every human being is (or ought to be) born into the Family, and consequently born to repro- duce it, when he completes himself. He can only actualize himself as an institutional person through the Family ; to be completely himself he must reproduce his origin, and generate his own process in other individuals, who are to be insti- tutional like himself. The man and the woman, being distinct and separate by Nature, become spiritually one in the Family, which, though not a Person or an Ego, has nevertheless a kind of Personalitv, being a THE FAMILY. 63 Will over both, to which both have to subject themselves in order to get and to beget them- selves, thus attaining their true destiny in that higher unity out of which both of them sprang. In the Family they share in a loftier Personality which is much more than either of them alone, for through it both are endowed with the ability to re-create and perpetuate themselves physically and spiritually — a new immortality — at the same time re-creating and perpetuating that loftier Personality itself through their active participation. The Family does not rest on purchase, though the wife may once have been bought directly, and indirectly may be still (at present the hus- band is oftener bought). The Family is not a contract, though contract may enter as one of its relations to external affairs. The Famil}^ we must repeat, is an Institution, the earliest form of actualized Free-Will whose end is to secure and to produce Free-Will. The human being (man and woman) has to belong to the Family and to keep up its process, in order to be completely himself, that is, in order to be an objective, actual Self, in possession of his own creative power. He may hold aloof from the Family, but then he is not actually insti- tutional ; his life is but partial without its domestic integrity. Thus the Family, while its end is the physical and spiritual reproduction of the indi- 64 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS, vicinal as a member of the human race, at the same time makes the life of us all truly rational, an actuality. For the rational person exists actually only in so far as he is creative, yea self- creative, reproducing himself as rational, and such he can be only through the Family. His physical Self he may indeed reproduce outside the Family, for he too is an animal, but not his spiritual, institutional Self, not his totality mor- ally and intellectually as well as physically. Of course there are other Institutions besides the Family, other forms of actualized Will, which are to be hereafter unfolded. But the Family is what makes the human individual truly appear, giving him to the world, yea to himself. The Family thus is supremely the first giver of man, who in the Family is a given object, even a present unto himself. To be sure, he must move out of this given, passive state, and become himself also the giver of himself. In Society we shall tiiid that he must be active and must labor, in order to rehabilitate his own body, which he has to be alwavs criving to himself. In the Family we have, accordingly, the fol- lowing process: (a) the sexual individual, en- dowed with his immediate natural Will or Desire ; (6) the Institution, which unites and subjects the two sexes as separate individual Wills, in a higher actualized Will whose end is (c) the reproduction of the individual, who is to be un- THE FAMILY. 65 folded till he be ready to go through the same cycle. In this movement we see that a certain phase of the individual Will (sexual) actualizes itself in the corresponding Institution (Family), and through the latter returns to itself in the offspring, the new individual, in whom the parents may well behold their seemingly realized immortality, though this alas! sometimes van- ishes before their eyes. But through the Family the human individual asserts himself as universal, generic, reproducing not only his own body but his own soul aloug with all the possibilities of the race. He vindicates his power to be not merely himself, limited within himself, but creative of Self, a new center of creation, ful- filling therein his divine destiny. Thus he is the universal man, generic, the actual objective genus homo, not the potential subjective one, having actualized himself through the Family. We may re-think briefly the various characteris- tics of the Family in the following statement. It is an Institution, being actualized Free-Will, which wills Free-Will by reproducing the Person ; it is secular, and not religious, as this Institu- tion does not demand the subordination of the human individual Will directly to the absolute Will, though the Family, like the other secular Institutions, has its religious side; it is the^rs^ Institution, since the institutional world must start with the human individual, and it is the 5 ^ 0(5 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Family which brings into existence this starting point, namely the human individual, and gives to him his first training to an institutional life. In another sense we may regard the Family as the first Institution. It contains implicitly all the Institutions which are to follow — social, political, religious, educative. It is the primal institutional germ or potentiality which is to develop into separate forms — a fact to be noted both in its thought and in its history. A do- mestic stage we shall find in Societv, State, Religion and Education, which, however, is not permanent, but develops out of its infantile con- dition. We shall now seek to unfold the process of the Domestic Institution, which will reveal the movement of the Ego in its three stages. Hence we shall look at the Family ordering itself pri- marily through the psychical movement. I. The Positive Family; this shows the Insti- tution, as it is, immediately; we wish, first of all, to grasp the Family in its present state of devel- opment, as far as this has gone among the most advanced peoples. Hence we here give the con- ception of the monogamous Family, which, how- ever, has preserved in it deeply negative elements. These are perpetually dissolving it anew, reducing it to the beginnino;. So we have the counter process. THE FAMILY. <'>7 II. The Negafii-e Fanulij; this brings to the surface the stream which is always running in opposition to the Positive Family, showing the tendency to revert to former and lower stages of the Domestic Institution. Thus the Family di- vides within itself into two currents, one back- ward and one forward, the regressive and the progressive. It is the fall or the descent of the Family ffoing; back to the beginning in the indi- vidual of Nature, who becomes emptied of his whole institutional content. But this is also the point of ascent, from which man rose and evolved the Domestic Institution as it exists to-day. III. The Evolution of the Family; this will show the historic unfolding of the Family, which, however, proceeds in psychical order. Here we observe the return out of separation and descent; man is seen overcoming the negative element which whirls him downwards. All Evolution is the transcending of limits which have become repressive and hence destructive. In the present case the evolutionary goal is the ideal of the Family, which is always insisting on a more perfect realization in new forms. Evolution, then, is only one phase or stage in the total process of the Family. In like manner we shall find that Evolution does not embrace the whole science of Institutions; there must be its counterpart, a devolution or descent, to make it possible. Also there must be that from which C8 .SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. U the descent as well as that toward which is the ascent, in order to have the whole process. So we start from and return to the Positive Family. Such is the general movement of the Family, which will be found to be in correspondence with that of the other social Institutions. Before plunging into details, it is well for us to re- call the unitary principle Avhich weaves through and connects the whole. The Family, springing from the Will, Avhich is itself a phase or an activity of the Ego, gets its organizing process from the Psychosis, whose threefold movement throws its search-light over the grand sweep of the total Institution, as well as into every little corner of the household. This is the genetic thread which the earnest reader is to be contin- ually reproducing in himself as he follows the course of the succeeding exposition, since thus he is ideally re-creating the Family. I. The Positive Family. Our first attempt will be to grasp the elements of the Family as they exist before us, imme- diately ; to give its process as we behold it every day. This we call its positive side or phase, in contrast to the negative or destructive elements, which are likewise at M'ork continually in the Domestic Institution. Or we mig-ht name this TEE FAMILY. 69 first phase the conception or idea of the Family, in so far as it has unfolded into present reality. Thus we seek to give the norm of the Family or the normal Family. As we shall see later, it has taken the race a long time to reach this point. For the people of the Occident, the monogamous principle of the Family is the valid one, which, however, has been evolved through the ages. Among most of the civilized peoples of Asia, polygamy maiirtains its hold, but even there it is said to be declining. In the positive process of the Family we shall note three leading stages : the sexual pair must get married, must found u home, and should realize themselves in the child, which is the aim and end of the Institution. So we have the three following stages of the Positive Family which constitute its process : — I. Marriage; this may be deemed the birth of the Family through the love of the sexual pair, which love, however, must have the^triple Confirmation, ere it find its full fruition in the Domestic Institution. II. The Home; this arises primarily from the separation of the pair from their respective households, and the formation of a new one, their own Home, which reveals its inherent char- acter in a triple Domestication. III. The Child; this is the end and actualit\' of the new Family, which brings into the world 70 SOCIAL IXSTITUTIONS. a new Free- Will, or the possibility thereof, and thus shows itself as the preserver of the race and its Institutions. In the preceding process we may see the Fam- ily horn through Marriage, realized through the Home, actualized through the Child, who is po- tentially at least a Free- Will whose destiny is to Avill Free Will, or one who is to become a free man. Thus is the Family truly an Institution, an actualized Will which is to secure Will by bringing it into existence and thereby to perpet- uate it. The birth of the Child is a Will new- born, which means a new creative center in the universe. These outlines we shall fill up with the more important details. I. ]\Iarriage. There are many gradations of Marriage, as is only too well known; still in every soul which can be called institutional there is an ideal of married life, a sense of what constitutes its completeness. It is not to be merely a phy- sical union, not to be merely a legal union, though it has its physical side and must be ac- cording to law , nor is it to be simply a partner- ship for some external purpose (niariage de con- venance), nor simply an emotional union de- pendent on the whiffs of caprice. Marriage is to possess the stability of the in- stitutional world itself, and is to be dissolved only in order to protect the Institution of the Family as a whole. An eternal element lies with- THE FAMILY. 71 ill it, which is to be secured by three Confir- mations — a personal, a civil, and a religious Confirmation. The Individual, the State and Religion are all to put their seal upon Marriage, participating in it and confirming it with their respective sanctions. Earth and Heaven as well as the human Soul o-et married in the ]\Iarriao^e of man and woman. This fact is to be considered more fully. I. The Inner Confirmation. The union of the sexual pair must be first internal, before it can be made external, acknowled_o-ed, and confirmed before the whole wtrld. This subjective side of the Family is its originative starting-point; from the depths of the soul springs an inner inclina- tion which fuses the two individuals into one life and one hope as well as into one purpose of ex- istence. The Ego, penned up within its own walls, finds itself alone, and of its own nature breaks forth and seeks to be itself through an- other. Such is the primal act of Lovet the individual sacrifices himself to and for another, and thereby regains himself. The Self refuses to exist solely for itself ; Love first compels it to renounce selfishness and to attain selfhood through another Self. Love is the primary, instinctive, most natural appearance of the institutional element in human nature. It is a personal feeling, yet a personal feeling which subordinates every other personal 72 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. feelino; to itself. Thus it commands the individ- ual, and this command is so compelling that it seems some objective power which rules the soul. Yet it is the soul's own supreme gift, which de- mands not only gratification but re-creation. Love is the primal manifestation of the Self as generic, and means not simply this individual's passion, but ideally the whole human race, the genus homo. The individual is literally to im- mortalize himself through Love, for as individual he is bound to perish, but as species he perpetu- ates himself, makes himself eternal. Man and woman, then, are the two individuals, w^ho in their rigid, mutually excluding limits are to be smelted into a new unity by the fires of Love, till each receives and acknowledges the inner Confirmation of this unity as lasting. Whereof we note the following process. (1) Rising out of our unconscious life comes an inclination which gradually or perchance quite suddenly shapes itself into a conscious selection of a person of the opposite sex. Vision usually starts this activity, but it is the soul which chooses just the one out of many. Why? From some innate congruity or fore-ordained harmony of natures, it is often said ; at least here is the transition out of the unconscious into the conscious ; Love steps from behind its impenetrable veil and asserts itself in a personal preference ; before this choice it was merely the possibility of choice and hence THE FAMILY. 78 unfathomable. The soul in the present relation might be defined as the potentiality of all Love, which, however, is called forth into reality by the presence of the right person. What brings the two together? Accordino; to the ancients this was the work of the God, Aphrodite, Cupid, Eros ; at any rate Love has this element of external de- termination, which lends to it what is often deemed its pre-destined or God-sent character. But still more decisively does it possess an inner self -unfolding power, which is evoked by suit- able stimulation ; the soul is Love as God is Love. (2) But Love is twofold, there must be two parties, who show a mutual emotion. Two Loves there are, separate, individual in their origin, yet these two are in order to be one. The tie must be reciprocal, each must sacrifice himself and herself in order to regain the Self which is the unity of both through both, and out of which the Institution is to develop. But just here lies the possibility of separation, of the inner conflict of Love. The emotion may not be reciprocal, there may be the sacrifice of the one Self without the response of the other. Thus there is the surrender without the media- tion through the other ; the result is that deep inner scission in the soul which is known as un- requited Love. It is one of the most common themes of Literature, since every human heart has had some touch of this pang, which has 74 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. indeed manifold sources and forms, and which has been wrought over and over into song, son- net, drama, opera, novel. Apparently sunny Italy has been most susceptible to this phase of Love's conflict, which has been fervidly uttered by Petrarch (Laura) and by Dante (Beatrice), and also by Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet, that marvelous Italian echo in Eno:lish. (3) The scission is healed by the betrothal. Each is made conscious of the other's devotion, gives and receives the pledge of fidelity. This pledge afiirms the permanent nature of their emotion, Avhich is the basic principle of the In- stitution. When both have acknowledged the eternal element in their inclination, it is ready to be made real, to pass out of its subjective state into the objective Institution, which calls up a new Confirmation. 2. Tlie External Confirmation. To give valid- ity to the permanent element of Love, which, as already said, is the institutional element of the Family, this is to be acknowledged and confirmed by the institutional world. As the new Family is a secular Institution, the realm of secular In- stitutions is to recognize and to receive it, thus making it a part of itself. (1) The respective Families of the betrothed have a certain right of Confirmation. That the daughter, for instance, should transfer her alleg- iance fi'oiu one Family to anotlicr, requires ap- THE FAMILY. 75 proval of the parents, who have reared her as their own. Disregard of tlie one rehition means logically the disregard of the other. The parent in Othello declares: "As she (the daughter) has deceived me, so she will thee" — which may be considered one motive of Othello's later jealousy. Still here it is possible for the parent to ignore or destroy the Right of Love, which has asserted itself subjectively as the paramount element of the Family. In these conflicts between the choice of the daughter and the command of the parent lies the chief stress of most of Shake- speare's comedies. This poet universally favors the right of the daughter, and therein is in har- mony with the spirit of the modern world. In general, however, it must be affirmed that the two Families of the betrothed should confirm the subjective will of the pair, and thus help make it into a reality, not only through consent, but also through cession of property, marriage portions, gifts, etc. (2.) Not only the Family is to confirm Mar- riage, but the State especially is to be its guard- ian. The grand function of the State is to secure Free- Will through the Law, so that it must secure even the subjective promise, which is a form of obligation. Still further, the State en- forces marriage-contracts, tmd it defines and vindicates certain rights which spring from the 76 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. married relation. Chiefly the State is to safe- guard the institutional element, which begins in the emotions. For the State is just that Insti- tution which is to secure Insitutions, and hence it takes all stages of the rising Family under its protection. To be sure there is a subjective side which the State cannot reach ; it cannot make whole the broken heart, even if it punish the transgressor. (3.) The civil ceremony of Marriage is the outward confirmation (through word or sign) of the State's participation. It may be deemed a kind of contract by which one party, the married pair, acknowledges the civil Institution, and the latter pledges its power to the domestic Institu- tion. Even a marriage license recognizes the authority of the State. Such is, in brief, the external or secular Con- firmation of Marriage. Its purpose is to make valid the inner union b}'' institutional sanctions, and to receive the new Family into the institu- tional world. Each side is to be impressed with the fact that it has both duties and rights. Still there can be Marriage without this exter- nal Confirmation. The two lovers can form a lasting union without the consent of their Families, and Avithout the acknowledgment of the State. That is, the inner principle can, if necessary, dispense Avith the outer sanction. But then it must have a new sanction, the jsanc- THE FAMILY. 77 tiou of its eternal nature b} tlie EternaJ. In other words Marriage must have a rehgious Con- firraation, through which it is sanctioned and contirmed by the divine Institution. 3. The Divine Confirmation. This has both an external and internal side. There is a return to the subjective element or emotion ; each party to the Marriage must feel that a Self beyond the individual Self confirms the union, and in fact participates in the same, imparting to it a divine character ; the two persons become one Person through the absolute Person, and in so far as they share in the divine nature. The first con- secration of Love, calling for the sacrifice of the Self to a higher Self, is truly a religious mani- festation. But this first consecration, which is subjective, demands an objective consecration, which must be institutional. There is a special Institution which is the divine Will actualized, the eternal Will which wills the Eternal. The Church, therefore, is invoked in Christian countries to put its seal of divine Confirmation upon Marriage through its ceremonies. Thus the married pair recognize the eternal principle in their union and vow to it their allegiance as to their Creator. (1) The divine Confirmation has its starting- point in Love, through which the individual first experiences a sense of consecration to a higher 78 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. power Avhic'li is Love, Love universal. It is through Love, as distinct from passion or caprice, that the individual begins to feel the presence of the absolute Person, who is thus the third Person in whom and by whom the two married Persons are united. How can two souls be made one? Only through the one universal Soul creative of all, and giving a new birth throuoh Love. For Love regenerates the hard individuality and compels it to live in and through another. Thus in Marriage the man and woman are brought into participation with the eternal Person, which is the underlying sanction of their union. This absolute "Will which is God, safe- guards all AVill willing Free Will and makes it of its own Self, which is eternal. For God is not Free Will willing Free Will capriciously and temporarily, but eternally ; the eternal Will must will the Eternal forevermore. Such is the God within, and his primal di\4ne Confirmation of Marriage in the human heart. (2) Marriage should also have the Confirma- tion of the God Avithout as well as of the God within, that is, of the Divine Person actualized in his Institution. Thus it comes that most peoples have the marriage ceremony performed by a man of priestly character whose function is to mediate the two sides, human and divine, and to bring the married pair into a participation Avith THE FAMILY. 79 God. Through the religious ceremony that Avhioh was implicit is made explicit, that which was subjective is made objective and institutional. The Catholic Church regards Marriage as a sacrament, a sacred vow to the eternal Person, which vow is thereby eternal and from which there is no release as long as life endures. (3) The inner life of the married pair is thus an everlasting union in and with God, the ever- lasting Person, through Love. The inner and the outer divine Confirmation exists together, one through the other ; on the day of the Marriage man enters a new institutional existence, having founded a new Famil}'' and received the divine Confirmation of his intention. And even though there be no religious ceremony, the religious or eternal element must be in the hearts of the parties, and they must perform internally the act of consecration to the Institution. Thus Marriage has completed itself, having had its three Confirmations, which we have named the inner (or emotional), the external (or secu- lar), and the divine (or religious). It is now an Institution set forth into the world and confirmed b}'^ Institutions. Starting with sub- jective Love in the human Person, it has risen to a participation in the objective or universal Love of the absolute Person. Such is the first stage of the Family, the process of its formation, which has rounded itself to comple- 80 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. tioii when the sacred rite has been performed, ending in the vow of eternal fealt}'^ to the domes- tic Institution in the presence of the Eternal. Forth the married pair go into the external world, in which, however, they have their own inner united life, which is that of the Family. Step- ping outside of the Church, the new Family enters its own environment, its own House, which is to become its Home. This is the material and spiritual structure which the Family builds about itself as its abiding-place and sanctuary, both for its own self-expression and for protection. II. The Home. The pair, having formed a new Family through Marriage, separate them- selves from their previous Families respectively, and establish their own household, in which they are no longer children but husband and wife. Such is the one separation; on the other hand they are separated from the outside world by their Home whose walls keep them to them- selves in their united life. A great advance in freedom — the ultimate end of all Institutions — is such a step. The couple, now have their own Family, they are in possession of their own domestic environment, which was not the case under the parental roof. Moreover, they, as truly institutional persons, reproduce their own Free Will in another new- born Will, and thereby attain the supreme end of the Family. Undoubtedly all this brings TEE FAMILY. 81 with it the subordination of the individual to the Institution; in that sense he has less freedom after marriage than before. Freedom of caprice is one thing, freedom through Law and Institu- tions is another; indeed these two sorts of free- dom are almost, though not quite, mutually exclusive. In the new Family the married pair are recon- structing their own existence, they are re-creat- ing what created them, they are making their pre-supposition. As children they were more or less the passive products of the Family, but now they are its active producers ; that is, the Family was given to them from the outside, but now they return and reproduce what was given. From the Determined they pass to the Self-determined, in the domestic sphere. The Home also has its inclosure shuttins; out the world, though it be in the world. Inside the Home we behold the orio;inal matriarchate or the woman as ruler. She is by nature the Home- maker ; the man returns to his Home, after the conflicts of the day, as to the realm of peace. The Home (Domus) has as its supreme char- acteristic domestication. It makes everything and everybody within its reach domestic — man, woman, animals, even the soil. The process of the Home will show this power of domestication, which will next be considered in its di:fferent phases. 6 82 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. 1. The woman domesticated. The immediate process of the Home is hers, is her own inner life; she is the possibility of all domestication. Her soul, her very touch has this domestic power. The necessaries of life pass through her hand : food, raiment, shelter she must domesticate, otherwise they are wanting in a certain element of nutrition ; at the truly domestic table something more than the physical body is fed. Of course people can eat at a restaurant and live, often they have to do so; but, however excellent the dishes, they soon grow wearisome. Even in the act of eating his dinner man lives not by bread alone. There should be an institutional nourishment alonof with that of the bodv. The woman as Home-maker is, then, to make domestic the very necessaries of life; but she is also domesticated by them in turn. The Home is implicitly in her spirit, still it is to be brought out by training and practice. The woman who has a Home and keeps it is never going to get rid of this domestic process. The garment passes through her hands, she is the purveyor of food, and she has if not to make at least to transform the shelter of the Family. Still there are various gradations of this process of domestication, which may be classified in a brief survey. ( 1 ) In the early stages of social development the wife does the whole work of providing and caring for the Family, or nearly so. She per- THE FAMILY. 83 forms outdoor labor, she has to wrest from Nature, by digging roots, by gathering wild berries, or by cultivating the fields, the things needful for life, while the man is the warrior or hunter or perchance councillor. The Indian squaw chops the wood, and insists upon it as her right; she has been seen to take the axe re- proachfully from the hands of her boy who wished by work to imitate the white man, and to remand him to his place as a good Indian. Women still toil in the fields among civilized peoples, but it is felt that she belongs in the house, which she is to transform more and more into the Home by her presence and by her inner life. Advancing civilization goes hand in hand with advancing domestication, and the latter may well be deemed, partially at least, the cause of the former. Woman's domestic labor now divides; at first she both provides from the outside the necessaries of the Family and transforms them in the Home. Time, however, releases her from the former and confines her to the latter task. (2) The wife, accordingly, devotes herself more exclusively to Home-making; she trans- forms what the husband procures from the out- side and brings to her; she cooks the food, produces the clothing by spinning, weaving and sewing, and she domesticates the rude bare house, making it over into a Home. She first 84 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. produced in her indoor life what are still known a3 domestic fabrics, and in the Home the first foundation was laid for domestic industry, which sprang from woman's love of her Home. This love led her to improve it through many little appliances, to beautify it, to make it reflect her own indwelling spirit. But the task became at last too great for her, taking all her time and energy, as she had to work by hand (manufacture, hand-work). "When she was turning into a machine, the man came to her aid and his own with an actual machine (sewing-machine, spinning-machine, etc.). Do- mestic manufacture now means, in spite of ety- mology, not hand-made at home, but rather machine-made at the factory. No small part of the present industrial world grew out of the Home. But time (or the man) has again brought relief to the woman by means of machinery. Where- with she in her Home enters a new stage. (3) The woman not only transforms, but she transfigures her environment — house, food, rai- ment, shelter, and all domestic appliances — with her spirit. She no longer works so much with her own hands inside her domestic temple, yet she puts her soul into all. She no longer cooks or sews much, though she knows how; still her look, her touch is upon everything. In a high degree she has become a spirit, indwelling and directing the Home. To be sure some relief THE FAMILY. 86 from the enslaving tasks of the hand is necessary for this stage ; there must also be time for men- tal culture and for travel ; such a woman ought to see the Homes of the world. At this point the Home becomes artistic, re- flecting purely and transparently the spirit of an Institution, here the family, with its personal embodiment at the center. The dwelling-place of the Family, the House is now to rise into being a work of Art, and reveal the soul inside by the architectural forms outside. The flower- incr of Domestic Architecture seems to belong to the Renascence, and not to antiquity or to the medieval period. When the woman can not only transform but transfigure her Home, it may be said of her that she is completely domesticated. Through a long; and severe training she has risen from her double task, outdoors and indoors, in which her domestic spirit was certainly present and active, but weighed down and smothered under her physical burdens, to being the spirit incarnate and creative of the Home. No doubt this last stage has not yet been attained by the great majority of Homes ; still it has been attained by some, and is to be made attainable for all, at least for all that persistently strive for its attain- ment. Let it be said here that wealth does not give it though helpful, that poverty does not hinder it though an impediment. 86 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Close to the woman, as she goes through this process of the Home, we have" seen the man hovering around, as it were, and then helping. At first he watched over her some- what in the distance, as defender of the com- munity ; then he drew near and relieved her of her outdoor burden, which he took upon himself ; finally he gave her a prodigious lift in her indoor task, relieving her of her grinding mechanical routine chiefly by a machine. Along with her he too is being domesticated — at which process we may next take a glance. 2. The man domesticated. He is properly the provider of the Home, as it is at present con- stituted. He goes outside of it and there has his struo-orle for its existence : the enemv of the nation or the forces of nature he must grapple with, and not let them destroy his Home. In protecting the Family he is protecting the creative source of his people, yea of his race. He must will not only the existence but the reproduction of Free-Will, and oifer himself, if necessary, as a sacrifice for such an end. Hence the man separates from Home, from wife and child, in order that he may secure that Home and wife and child. He, too, is plainly in training, is in the process of domesti- cation. (1) Man's first domestication is his Marriage, bis submission to the Institution, which is of THE FAMILY. 87 course his own act. But then the wife domesti- cates him too, transforms in the Home quite everything which he needs. In one way or other he receives from her hands his food, his clothing, his shelter. He may have furnished her the original crude material, and usually does furnish it, but she domesticates it and through it domesticates him. So the Home is her field of influence, the place where her spirit rules, the trne gi/nocraci/ ; the man in the Home drinks of her Institution, and participates in her soul, going back daily to the fountain-head of the institutional world, the Home. (2) But in the Home the man is not to stay, his call is to go forth into the world, with which he has the conflict of existence for himself and for his own. Hence he is the head of the Family in all external relations, he is its representative before the law which is to determine these ex- ternal relations. On this side the spirit of the man rules, and there is here an androcracy which has its field more outside the Home than inside. In the lower sphere man has to furnish the strength, in the higher the justice of the world. In primitive society he procures, as hunter or herdsman, the raw material of life;, later he furnishes from the outside what the woman transforms inside the Home ; finally when her domestic burden is too great, he relieves her b^ the machine, 88 SOCIAL mSTITUTIONS. This last factor is to be carefully noticed. It is the man who comes to woman's aid with his inventive power even in her own sphere. Though the woman is the one who sews, she did not invent the sewing-machine; though she is the original spinner, she did not invent the spinning- machine, nor did she, the chief weaver, invent the power-loom. These inventions have been the greatest liberators of woman, enabling her to rise in her own Home from doing the work of the hand to doing work of the spirit, from being a mere domestic artisan to being a domestic artist. And these inventions have been the work of men, the end of which has been the higher freedom of woman in her own Home. The genius of the woman, as revealed in the past, is not inventive; hers is a different sphere. (3) The man returns to his Home after his struggles with the world, thus obtaining the bene- fit and the blessing of what he has done outside. A nobler domestication awaits him there, for he shares in every advance of the Home. He has to be domesticated every day, coming back from the battle of life to the peace of the Family. To be sure he sometimes finds there a new war, greater than that outside, and he may have to flee in the other direction for his peace. But these negative elements in the Family will come up later for consideration; at present we are looking at the positive Family. THE FAMILY. 89 Such, then, is in general the process of man's domestication, through which he has to pass in his Home, that he quaff of the primal institu- tional spirit of his race. He must perform daily this service, this act of self-surrender to the In- stitution, otherwise he is in danger of becoming barbarized, a selfish, combative unit in competi- tion with other like units in a social Pandemo- nium. Thus the man has been tamed from his wild, natural condition, and transmuted into an institu- tional being by the Home — all of which we have called his domestication. And the woman too we have seen passing through the same process in her way. The natural man and woman (or human nature), have been subdued, transformed, and filled with a new end. Now the fact arises that external Nature likewise is to be domesti- cated ; not onl}' human Nature but also extra- human Nature — animal, plant, even the inorganic elements — must be made domestic, made to par- ticipate in this spirit of the Home. It would seem that all Nature, the cosmos itself, is at last to be domesticated, and the Universe to become the 'Home of Man. 3. Nature domesticated. We conceive the house, the abode of the Family, as the center of domestication, from which rays out an influence over surrounding Nature. The Home of the agriculturist we may first consider it, subjecting 90 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. the wild world about him to the great end of the Family, which world is thereby domesticated. A new spirit or character enters into the object of Nature, be it animal or plant, and makes it over ; this spirit issues from the Home and adds a new title and a new trait to the natural animal or plant, making it domestic along with the man and the woman. What is the source of this added element? As already stated, the end of the Family is the re- production of the human individual as an insti- tutional being through the Institution. As the Family transforms man, so it transforms the lower orders of Nature, whose reproduction is not now left to run wild in mere gratification, but is controlled by and filled with the new end, the Institution. Thus all Nature is to be first domes- ticated, then socialized, and even civilized ; it is to be made to share in Family, Society, State. Let us note briefly the stages of Nature domesti- cated. (1) Beginning with the animal kingdom we observe that the Home has domesticated two animals as its special guardians, the dog, and in a less degree, the cat. Then it has tamed and improved another class of animals for their food- producing qualities — the cow, sheep, pig, goat. Still another class it has domesticated for work, as the horse. Then, too, a great variety of fowls — turkey, duck, goose, pigeons, cbickens. Here THE FAMILY. 91 we may place an insect, the honey-bee; also a fish possibly, the gold-fish. ' ht t^i--^^''' All these specimens of animated nature were once wild, or have been derived from wild ances- tors. But man, or rather the Family, has taken them and imparted to them of its domestic spirit. This is the transforming power to which all Nature seems plastic. The Home may be con- sidered Nature's first artist, filling her forms with a new spirit which is institutional. Language has registered this fact in the word doiuestlc as applied to an animal. Take the dog which has been variously supposed to be derived from the wolf, fox, jackal, or a species of wild dog; at any rate, how different the domestic breed from the wild ! And how many different forms, sizes, characters in the domestic breed ! Truly a for- mable material did the original canine stock furnish to the hands of man, similar to the block of marble in the hands of the sculptor. How is this done? Chiefly the human Family takes to itself the animal Family, and provides for it against the accidents and strokes of savage Nature, securing to it often food and shelter, and sometimes clothing. The Home does for the animal what it does for itself, and thus gives to the dumb creature a Home, thereby making it domestic. We see, therefore, that domestica- tion is deeply connected with reproduction; the l>nit(', reproducing itself in most formnble jiust 92 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. at the period of formation, and the Family transforms it with its own spirit and fills it with its own end. The animal becomes more fertile by domesti- cation, which looks after this productive power. Darwin says that domestication often cures ster- ilitj^ and the pivotal fact of his doctrine of Natural Selection is the reproduction of the in- dividual as moulded by nature and man . Nature gives an enormous increase, but destroys enor- mously through the struggle for existence. Man stops this destruction, through his protection of the reproductive power of animals and his care for the offspring. He builds a Home for his animals, in a degree patterned after and certainly derived from his own Home, and treats them with a domestic affection sprung of his own life. And the influence is retro-active. A neglected horse is apt to mean a careless husband or father ; the animal Home reflects the master's own Home ; look into a farmer "s pig-pen, and in most cases you can tell something about his house inside. Among the peasantry of Europe the stable and the cow-stall are often under the same roof with the human household; both Families, that of the animal and of man, occupy different apartments of the same Home. Under the rule of the Home there is a recog- nized law observed by the animal members ; the cat and the dog, hereditary foes to each other, THE FAMILY. 58 learn to keep the peace of the household and endure each other's presence, indeed they have been known to help each other. Both control their predatory instinct against other domesti- cated animals, though they let it loose against wild prey. Thus the lower animal is brought to recognize the Law and the Institution through the Home, and it too in its wa}^ becomes institutional. (2.) In like manner quite a fragment of the veg- etable world has been domesticated. The grains (wheat, rye, barley, maize, etc.) are derived from wild ancestors; so, too, the fruits and the culi- nary plants (peas, potatoes, cabbages, etc.). Here again it is the Family usually which fur- nishes food, shelter and protection in various ways, guarding the plant against its enemies, and enabling it to reproduce itself prodigiously. Thus the human Home secures its sustenance by look- ing after the vegetable Home — the garden, the farm. Man lives from the reproductive power of the animal and plant ; his own body is reproduced daily from food, w^hich is itself a product of re- productive energy. Seeds, grains, nuts are the concentrated germs of vegetable reproduction, through which man reproduces daily his body. The Home takes delight in flowers and culti- vates them for their own sake, as they reflect it and suggest it in its inner essence. The flower is the outer manifestation of the plant's own re- production, and, having no immediately useful 94 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. end, becomes a symbol of the Family, beautiful in the Home because suggesting the ideal purpose of the Home, which is also a flowering of the individual. In fact the vegetable process has a very close analogy to the domestic process, each passing through its own cycle. (3) Inorganic Nature also is domesticated, is transformed and filled with the end of the Home. When the agriculturist puts his plow into the soil, he is subjecting it to a new purpose ; he is seeking to make it productive, to make it the Home of his plants and animals, of himself and his Family. The earth's generative power he must seize, employ, transform ; he cannot per- mit it to run wild in native luxuriance. Thus the Family trains the reproductive capacity of the soil for its own reproduction. Note that the soil too needs food in the shape of manure and ferti- lizers, for it can be exhausted, and it may also require protection against flood and storm. Then it may need special assistance to change it from a sterile into a fertile condition, which happens in the case of irrigation. Cultivation is primarily domestication. Wild man and wild nature obtain their early culture through the Home, which, though rude, is civil- izing. The Family is the primordial fountain of the institutional spirit, which, as we have just seen, reaches down from man to the animal and plant, to the very earth upon which he treads. THE FAMILY. 95 Not without significance has "a free soil" been conjoined with the ideal end of freedom, and given its name to a political creed. The ground upon which the human being builds his Home is to be made institutional, and thus en- dowed with his supreme end, freedom. Man educates his animals and his grains as he does his own child, and they are capable of receiv- ing his education and in a way acquiring his spirit. The plasticity of all Nature to domestic training is the prime fact of civilization. The farmer can protect his crop often against the coming storm or frost ; it is getting to be one duty of the State to forecast for him the weather. The me- teorological process of the earth, or a large part of it, is becoming the daily knowledge of every person who may be affected by that process, and who may, therefore, protect not only his domes- tic but his domesticated circle from the fury of the elements. The Home has now completed its sweep of power, having domesticated both human and extra-human Nature. It has made the world over mto the dwelling-place of the Institution, creat- ing an outer visible manifestation of the Family. Next we shall look inside the Home, and behold its ideal end realizing itself, actually embodied in a fresh incarnation of the Person. III. The Child. The two become three, and thus we behold the domestic trinity, which is, how- 96 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. ever, a deeper unity. For this unity is no longer merely subjective and emotional, but is an exist- ent visible object, which mediates the married twain in reality. The love of husband and wife becomes incorporate in the Child, self -creative and creative of the Self. That which was im- plicit in Marriage, has now become explicit; the inner meaning of love is uttered and published to the world in this third person of the domestic trinity. Already we have found that the Family, being actuahzed Free-Will, has as its end the repro- duction of the human individual as a new Free- Will in the world. The individual first appears as the Child, who is to be born in the Family, and is to receive from it his early training. In the Child the parents return, as it were, into themselves, into their very beginning, and re- enact their own cycle of existence. They repro- duce themselves as sexual and as unmarried through marriage, and they are to carry their child forward as they were carried forward by the Family, till perchance he gets married, as they did. They are to give him not merely their phj^sical but also their spiritual heritage. The great end of the Family is that an institutional Person be reproduced, not simply a human animal. The Child at birth is but the possibility of Institu- tions, which are to be realized in him through education. THE FAMILY. 97 Thus we are to see that the essence of the Child is that he is a return, yet a new and orig- inal return of the parents into themselves, into their origin, reproducing not only their bodies but also their souls laden with their moral, intel- lectual, and institutional endowments. A still deeper return lies in every born Child : he is the return to the beginning of his race, which he has to reproduce ideally in his OAvn development. Very well-known has become the educational maxim : the Child unfolds as the Kace has un- folded. Ee-creating the life of humanity in him- self, is he truly generic and belongs to the genus homo, being ordered in said genus by an inner classification, not by an outer one. 1. The Child in the Home. The Child is born in the Home, which has the most immediate re- lation to the new-comer. He too must be domes- ticated first of all; with his earliest nurture begins his domestic training. Into the Home he comes an animal, naked of body and naked of Institutions, which double nakedness the Home must first clothe. ( 1 ) The parents have also their discipline in the Home with the infant. For them the birth of the child is likewise a new birth, a kind of palingenesis. Love is re-created in a fresh form ; in Marriage the love of husband and wife was simply internal, but now it exists in an external object, which is, so to speak, both of 7 98 SOCIAL INSTITUTION'S. them. The mother loves her child, and in him loves her husband with a new love. The father too feels the like regeneration of his love for the mother of his child. They are married again by the strongest confirmation, really the soul and the purpose of the three confirmations before mentioned. Hence conies a new consecration of both to their common love, which has brought with it a new tremendous responsibility. (2) The child in its turn unfolds into love for the parents, thus the three are united in a deep emotional bond. As the mother stands in a more direct relation to her offspring than the father, there springs up a peculiar bond between the mother and her child, which gives her the first place in his training. She instinctively seeks to reproduce in him her own devotion and self- sacrifice; her mother-love longs to see itself re- turned through the child. Still mother-love just by its excess, by too much devotion to the child, can produce in him quite the opposite of itself, namely selfishness. The father is not to be omitted in the training of his child in the Home. In the man is usually found a more unbending element, that of justice, which the child has also to learn ; thus he finds out what he has really done, being made to taste the nature of his deed. Obedience to law as voiced by the parents belongs to the training of the child especially in the Home. This obedi- THE FAMILY. 99 ence has to puss through some form of fear ere it I unites fully with love. The child has to learn to obey through love, he does not possess such obedience at first hand or by nature. (3) So we see that Nature even in the inno- cent babe is to be domesticated , or at least is to start on its career of domestication. Already we have observed that this is true both of human and extra-human Nature, and the child being human cannot well be an exception. The Home is to make him domestic, to fill him with the Institution in its first form, that of the Family. So the Home is to impart the primal institutional spirit to the child, which is the love of mother and father, and through this love he is to obey their commandments. Obedience through love is the first subjection of the child's will to the Institution, its first training to an ethical life. The parent's love of his child must have in it law, and the child's love of his parent must have in it obedience. Still the parent should never forget that the very purpose of his law is the training of child into freedom. Through parental authority the child is to learn what freedom is, that is, insti- tutional freedom . Arbitrary commands, passion, or caprice on the part of the parent are destruc- tive of true education. At this point the parent needs help, his child is taken from him during a part of the day or year and put under a new control. 100 iSOCIAL INi^TITUTIONS. 2. The Child at school. Such is the separa- tion which now appears in the life of the child : he is removed from the Home and sent to school, whose ultimate object is to train him to an insti- tutional life as a whole. The Family begins soon to show its inade- quacy for the complete training of the child, who is to be inducted into the institutional world freed from its personal factor in the Home. Obviously the Family can for the most part sim- ply reproduce itself in the child, can make him domestic. But he must soon take wings and fly beyond this limitation ; his destiny is to become a social being also, and to absorb into himself the entire world of Institutions. Now there is an Institution which has just this purpose, namely the school or the Educative Institution. (See the third part of the present work where the Educative Institution is specially treated.) So the child has to be sent out of its home to school, in which the parent with his love is not the ruler, but a new kind of authority. He be- gins to make the transition from the law of love to the love of the law. Obedience is not so much to the person as to the Institution. The school is certainly not to banish love but to fill it with a new content, which does not displace, but complements domestic love. The day on which the child starts to school, and separates him from the parental Home to enter the educative Home, THE FAMILY. 101 is an event like that of birth, he finds himself in a new world. Of course this separation should not be too sudden or rapid. The following stages of the Educative Institution we may here notice, though the whole subject is to be considered later. (1) The kindergarden, which is the happy transition, belongs to the school, but fuses it with the spirit of the Home, and has the child only a few hours each day. (2) The school proper takes a greater amount of time and effort from the Home. (3) ^ The child, becoming mature, usually leaves the ( Home entirely for a while, and goes to a distant school, college, or university, each of which has its own social life. Thus the Family in educating the child must call in the aid of the Educative Institution, for the mother with her love and the father with his law are not equal to the task. Such is the case even when the parents strive to do their duty ; still more is the school with its institutional trainins; necessary when the parent is neglectful or tyrannical, and the child is in consequence dis- obedient, and receives no domestication from the Home. The child in early life passes daily from Home lo school and back again, thus sharing in both. The school keeps increasing its demands till at last he separates entirely from Home and enters a school- world. This separation from Home 102 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. may of course be brought about in other ways besides that of the school. The child sooner or later, returns home, but he is no lonsrer a child. He has vindicated his independence, and in that light we may look at him for a moment. 3. TJie free individual. From birth the child has been in training for freedom. The mother even in her play with the child is really making him independent of herself. She calls forth his endurance, his manliness, his selfhood, in fine every trait which develops a self-reliant char- acter. In the school begins the actual separation from Home, which, at first for brief periods, at last becomes complete. Having received the training of the Home and the School, he is a free man, and is henceforth to be trained by himself in his grapple with the world. Though he return to the paternal roof, he is no longer the child at home, nor the child at school. He has graduated from both. He is a free indi- vidual, yet with the new task of freedom. Through education, domestic and scholastic, he possesses ideally in his soul the whole institutional world ; his new task is to make actual by his deed and to re-create in his life this world of Institu- tions. He is not to live simply an individual ex- istence, but an universal one; though he be a free individual, he is not actually free, his freedom is actualized onlv in and throuoh Institutions. THE FAMILY. 108 The first of these Institutions is the Family, which our free individual is now to enter. But this brings us back to INIarriage, which, we may remember, was the starting-point of the Family. Thus we have gone through the domestic cycle whose end has returned to its beo-innino^. Mar- riao;e, having; made the Home, ha vino; begotten the child and educated him into independent manhood, has reproduced itself. Such is the completed process of the Positive Family. But with this completion of the Positive Family an element of dissolution enters the Home. The free individual, offspringof theFamih% separates from it and thus begins to break it up. There are all grades of permanence in the Family, from the American to the Chinese. In the latter, even the dead parent has his place. Still further, the formation of the new Family has a tendency to dissolve the old, which indeed has lost its substantial purpose when it can no longer rear the child. The free individual must actualize his freedom, and so must quit father and mother, and establish his own Family. The acorns fall and leave the parent tree stript, each is itself to become a tree. But the free individual may use his freedom in a wholly different way, he may refuse to estab- lish his own Home, he may hold himself aloof from the Family, he may prefer to keep to him- self his free individualitv. Thus he becomoe 104 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. negative to the Family in asserting his personal freedom, which he declines to makes institutional by a domestic life. Thus at every stage of the process of the Family there is a destroying element which inter- twines itself in the movement, and which lies in the very nature of Free-Will. The result is a fall or descent of the Family in the midst of its very bloom, a tendency to undo itself and go backward to the primal starting-point. No treatise on the Family is complete without taking into account this negative element permeating its organism at every joint. Moreover we must see the place of such a phenomenon in the movement of the whole Institution. II. The Negative Family. Here we must reckon with all the adverse forces which tend to dissolve the Family. They will reveal its negative process, which is indeed inherent, as long as man possesses that marvelous gift of his called Free- Will, and realizes it freely. The recompense comes to him whether or not he will actualize that Free- Will in an Institution. If he does not, then the counter-current of negation sets in, and he need not stop till he reduces him- self back to the merely natural individual, whom Kousgeau and others deem the truly free man. THE FAMILY. 105 Still the Family may be destroyed from the outside also, in the simple process of Nature. Death keeps his reckoning with the Family, often in the most remorseless fashion, sweeping down not only the aged but also the young. Partic- ularly the child is his prey, the very object and hope of the Family ; the old tiger loves to lap the blood of infants, of whom nearly one-half die before the age of five years. Such is the element of external Fate which perpetually overhangs the Family. Thus we are compelled to look at the Family in a twofold aspect, positive and negative, con- structive and destructive ; alongside the Institu- tion as it exists in its highest form is a descend- ing current which is carrying it back to a state of nature, to its physical beginning. Within the monogamous Family we behold an incessant re- version to former stages. These various negative forces working upon and in the Family we shall seek to order in a rapid survey for the purpose of bringing out the psychical con- nection of the phenomena. The Family may be broken up from the outside, it may be dissolved from the inside, it may be perverted into an Insti- tution just the opposite of itself and utterly destructive of its end. These are the three stages of what we call the negative Family in a general way, embracing all the destructive agencies which are connected with the Institution. 106 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. I. The Family Assailed from Without. As the members of this Institution are human and mortal, they are subject to the external forces of Nature. But just through its own natural growth the Family is separated and broken in twain. Still further the individual may keep aloof from the Family. In all these cases the inner element of domestic life, love, is not involved, at least not directly. (1) Death is the most immediate of these as- sailing forces. It may come at any time to any member ; still in the due course of nature the affed are taken and their Family comes to its end. But also in the due course of Nature the new Family appears. (2) This produces a division into two Fam- ilies, the old and the new, the latter growing out of the former and taking away its young life. The domestic cycle blooms, throws off its fruit, and decays in a generation or two, like the vege- table cycle which may last only a year. So this very process of life bears in it the end of life, and the Family separates into two Families, the ascending and the declining. (3) But the main negative force undoing the Family lies in the free individual, who, when ready, refuses to enter the domestic relation. To be sure he has his grounds, sometimes suffi- cient, but mostly insufficient, for not assuming his share in the institutional task of humanity. THE FAMILY. 107 Negative is his conduct, whatever be the reason ; if all were to do as he does, there would be no Family, and soon no human race. Thus he gives a blow to the Institution from the outside like that of Fate, though his separation from the Family be simply passive. Such a person, by refusing to enter the grand institutional move- ment of mankind at its starting-point, denies his own principle of existence at its fountain-head. Celibacy may, of course, be founded on good reasons. Conscientious people have been known to renounce love and even to break off a matri- monial engagement on account of an hereditary taint in the blood, such as insanity, consumption, scrofula. They renounce the Family for the sake of the Family. Then the ups and downs of life may turn marriage down, even after one or several fair trials. But the great rule is that every individual get married, and thereby become a truly free being, that is institutionally free. Unmarried he can be capriciously free, but such freedom is logically at the expense of his race. Religion has sometimes felt itself compelled in certain cases to enforce celibacy upon its vo- taries — a phenomenon which has appeared both in the Orient and the Occident. When the initiate of a given class (priest or monk) enters the divine Family, he must renounce the secular Family, between which is supposed to lie an in- herent contradiction. Whatever be the ground 108 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. justifying monasticism in some ages and coun- tries, it will hardly hold for the modern world except in exceptions. Such are, in general, the negative forces assail- ing and destroying the Family from the out- side — forces coming from Nature (in death), from the Family itself (in its growth), and from the Individual (through his abstention), who can destroy like Nature. Thus the latter has shown a negative power which is next to be seen at work inside the Family, after the marriage-tie has been formed. II. The Family Assailed from Within. — Already we have noticed the unity of the sexual pair in Marriage, Avhich unity properly springs from and rests upon an emotion, love. This in- ner bond of the Family can be assailed by the married individual, as he (or she) is still a self- determined being ; in the Institution he can still refuse subordination to the Institution, and break the bond in tvvain. Thus Marriaofe dissolves into its orisfinal elements, the two sexual individuals, and the at- traction of love is succeeded by the repulsion of hate. The union which was sealed by the three Confirmations is torn asunder by the destroying agencies being waked up, which were put to sleep by love and its institutional consecration. At this point we enter the chief problem of the Family, especially of the monogamous Family. THE FAMILY. 109 How shall the bond between the sexual twain be kept pure and permanent, and thereby fulfill the end of the Family? Beino- twofold primordially, it has always the tendency to reversion, which can be provoked into activity in various ways. Whereof we may note the following: — (1) A new emotion may be roused by a new person, who appears in the intercourse of human life. Thus Love may assail Love, the institu- tional feeling may be attacked and undermined by the very inclination whence it arose. This is the grand hazard in all Marriage. Other individ- uals are always crossing the path of both hus- band and wife, and exciting new emotions and new affinities, which may become virulent and disintegrating to the union already formed. Such is the everlasting exposure of the domes- tic Institution to the chances of the world on the one hand and to the changeful subjective nature of the individual on the other. A return to that inner starting-point of the Family is always pos- sible, a reversion, as it were, to its birth. To be sure duty, honor, religion ought to suppress the rising demon, but may not be able. Incompati- bility between the husband and wife has usually its source in this third person who has secretly taken the place of one or the other. Literature, especially in the novel, has held up to man the slow dissolution of the married pair through the rising emotion which overturns the no SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Family. In this repect the novel of all novels is Goethe's Elective Affinities ( Wahlverioandt- scJiaften). (2) Divorce is the complete outer manifesta- tion of this inner or possible separation. The law is invoked to undo that which it has done ; the State as the Institution which is to make Free- Will valid, is called upon to release each party from the common promise, when the inner foundation of Marriage is destroyed. The union may become completely destructive of Free-Will in the individual, then the law has to step in or fail of its purpose. Divorce is, on tlicAvhole, a phase of the great movement of freedom, though it certainly can be abused. Doubtless the woman receives the Greater benefit from divorce which has been made easier chiefly in order to protect the personality of the wife, when she is the victim of cruelty, drunkenness, or neglect on the part of the hus- band. The Family is to actualize Free-Will, not to destroy it; when the latter happens, the State has to perform its duty, which is to preserve Free-Will. The law of divorce should not be too lax, nor* too strict. Agitation to limit divorce is well enough, but this is not to be abso- lutely prohibited. Divorce within proper bounds has a tendency to prevent worse things than itself; often the illicit union will be formed if the legal one is impossible, as such a THE FAMILY. Ill law is felt to violate the very })urp()se of all law. The individual having failed in his tirst attempt to found a Family through no fault of his own, is not to be shut off forever from domestic life for that reason. Particularly the woman is to be protected in her divine right of being a home- maker. A divorce law absolutely prohibitive may work the deepest injustice and cause greater evils than it can possibly remedy. It is really anti- institutional, for it can prevent man and woman from entering the domestic Institution for all time, because *f one mistake made often under extenuating circumstances. But even if trans- gression and not mistake be the cause, certainly the transgressor can repent and be restored to his first right. The Catholic Church makes marriage one of the Sacraments and regards the matri- monial tie as indissoluble except by papal dis- pensation ; some Protestants hold essentially the same view. Marriage is to have a divine Con- firmation, as we have seen ; but when the Family turns to an Inferno, Heaven must permit or rather cannot prevent its self-dissolution. (3) Free Love (so-called) is the abolition of all institutional confirmation of Marriage, abro- gating Family, State and Church, and carrying the sexual pair back to their primal emotional basis. Such a domestic condition is declared by its promoters to be a great advance toward free- 112 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. (lorn, but really it is a relapse to the first caprice of passion. Free Love is not merely an emotion, but a doctrine which is defended with argument. It affirms that Marriage, at least monogamous Mar- riage, is a failure : thus it becomes negative to the institutional Family while seeking to realize anew the Family. Free Love takes many forms, low and high ; in its highest form it endeavors to se- cure the permanent element of the Family by a new society or community removed from the ordinary institutional life of man. Kot only a new domestic and social order but a new religion oftens springs out of this tendency, or possibly it springs from the religion. Mormonism is a curious reversion to the polyga- mous Orient in the heart of the monogamous Occident, accompanied with a new political and ecclesiastical organization, which was intended to reform the evils of Western civilization, as its claim runs. Communism has as its primary purpose the abolition of private property, but often it in- cludes also the abolition of the Family as an in- dependent Listitution, whose place is taken by the communit}'. The great end of the Family, which is the reproduction of the institutional per- son, is transformed into the reproduction of the communal person, the child being born into and reared by the community for its end. The most famous and most successful as well as most re- TEE FAMILY. 118 volutionary of all these communistic schemes is (or was) that known as the Oneida community, whose history, however, is properly a phase of the Religious Institution. Thus we see generated in the Family negative forces which turn upon it and seek to destroy it. Such a neo;ative force may spring out of its emo- tional fountain, love, and carry this inner separa- tion forward into an outer legal dissolution of marriage. But the institutional side of the Family also may give rise to a destructive move- ment which aims to abolish the Family as such and to assign its function to another Institution. The monogamous Family is declared unable to fulfill the purpose of its existence, and therefore must be supplanted by some arrangement which can. But the unquestionable tendency of com- munism in the matter of wives is the following. III. The Perverted Family. The negative sweep of the Family ends not only in destruction but in organized destruction. A domestic In- stitution rises whose end is to destroy the end of the domestic Institution. The individual, spe- cially the woman, becoming an outcast from the Family, is still going to have her Family, in accord with her domestic nature, yet directly hostile to the real Family. She still makes a Home, but it is a negative Home in opposition to the true Home. Here we behold that phenome- non commonly known as " the social evil," which 1J4 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. is an organized Family with its Home whose pur- pose is to undo the Family and Home. Thus the positive and negative elements of the Family have developed into their fiercest dualism, standing front to front in conflict. Both are present everywhere, though in urban life the Perverted Family is most pronounced and undis- guised, seeking to annihilate the institutional Family by destroying its end, which is the repro- duction of the institutional individual. This Perverted Family is the culmination of what we have above called the Negative Family, which now has its own active domestic organization, and is the complete antithesis of the Positive Family. Here, too, we can discern several stages which take the form of lapses or reversions to previous less advanced conditions of the Family. In all societies we note a downward development of the Institution by the side of and in a struggle with its upward development. (1) We may place as first the monogamous lapse, in which the sexual pair come together in a perverted union, yet remain faithful to each other, one to one in the bond of love it may be, yet outside the Family. This is usually the most subtle, most hidden, and probably the most pernicious of the forms of the Negative Family. Two households, as it were, the one institutional, the other anti-institutional; each THE FAMILY. 115 also monogamous, taken by itself; thus is the human being torn in twain, his heart on one side, while law, duty, and conscience are on the other. The case may happen and only too often does happen that the emotional and institutional ele- ments which ought to be united into one Family are separated into two Families, the open and the concealed, the acknowledged and the unac- knowledged, the confirmed and the unconfirmed, one of Law and the other of Love. (2) A further descent is the polygamous lapse, which has indeed already shown itself secretly in the previous stage, when, for instance, the man or the woman has two households, or belongs to both a positive and a negative Family. But the complete manifestation of this lapse is seen when the sexual individual renounces all fidelity to the one person, when the woman drops down to polyandry (many men), and the man to polygyny (many women). Thus the monoga- mous relation is completely negated. We shall see in the next section (on the Evo- lution of the Family) that all these forms of polygamy appear in the historic development of the domestic Institution. In such case they belong to the positive progress of man toward the higher Family ; but when man drops back into them from the higher Family, they are turned into the movement of his descent, and what was once a stage of advance becomes a 116 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. stage of retrogression. The reversion is the perversion ; to go back to polygamy from mo- nogamy is decadence ; to rise to polygamy out of mere promiscuity of the sexes is progress. (3) Herein we reach the last stage of des- cent — sexual promiscuity. Such is the name which investigators have given to the primal con- dition of the human animal, that potential state in which the first germs of the institutional Fam- ily begin to appear. But as a reversion of the monogamous Family it exhibits man in the most degraded social condition, he has sunk not to animality but to bestiality. For animality maj- mean innocence or even ascent, but bestiality means the fall, truly the fall of Satan from the top to the very bottom. The dog as dog is an animal simply, and we let his instinctive promis- cuity pass, but man as dog is a beast, whom Dante transforms into a monster part human and part animal, and puts down into the Inferno. In most communities, certainly in every large city, is a patch given up to sexual promiscuity, which seems able to assert itself along with every advancing step of civilization. So powerful, so inborn in human nature is this tendency to rever- sion, that sometimes one thinks that it increases with the increased tension which comes with all higher evolution. What to do with this plague- spot is a chief if not the chief social problem of modern reformers. Sometimes it has been sup- THE FAMILY. 117 pressed with violence, but then the poison has been found working outwards into healthy por- tions of the social organism, which seems always to have corners just ready to be infected and on the point of reverting to some transcended stage. In such a tension do we live and hover between the upwards and the downwards of the Family. Thus we have traced the neo-ative forces at work in the F.imily and have seen it revert in a de- scending line to its original sexual units, man and woman. The domestic Institution is continually being resolved back into its very beginning, which process is going on in the midst of our highest civilization. Are we then doomed to revert to the animal, and in such a cataclysm are our spir- itual acquisitions destined to be lost? There can be little doubt that certain races have so reverted, leavinof a few faint signs of their civilization be- hind in the works of their ancestors. But with all the foregoing facts granted, there is still an answer to this pessimistic view of hu- man development. Along with the before-men- tioned negative forces of the Family is found another energy which is continually overcoming them, turning negation upon itself and thus transforming it into the positive principle. The Negative Family must at last serve up its own inner character to itself, nmst destroy its own destructive element. This is essentially the movement of Evolution, which has been so fully 118 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. taken up bj the soul of the present age as one of its prime spiritual needs. Accordingly we shall now look at the Evolution of the Family, in which we shall see every previous negative stage of the domestic Institution overcome from within, self -undone and transcended, whereby is revealed the genetic history of the Institution. III. The Evolution of the Family. We have just witnessed the process of descent and disintegration which is at work continually in the Family, as it exists in the most civilized socie- ties. This destructive side is now to meet with a constructive, ever-progressing principle, which is the grand modern talisman of thought and sci- ence — Evolution. As we had a fall, so now we are to have an ascent, an overcoming of the negative energy just unfolded. If man can drop back to the animal out of his institutional heritage, he can rise from the animal, has indeed thus risen. Evolution is the real answer of the age to denial, to skepticism, to pessimism, being a natural his- tory of the human race transcending its own neg- ative forces. Still Evolution is not the complete process of the Institution, but a phase or stage of it, as we have already set forth. It cannot be left out of the complete treatment of the Family, yet is not IRE FAMILY. 119 by itself the complete treatment, as some one- sided evolutionists seem to think. Indeed, it is meaningless as a method or as a thought without the corresponding descent or disintegration ; more- over it takes for granted a positive, more or less advanced condition of the Family toward which it has moved and is still moving. Evolution, therefore, we place as the third stage or phase in the total process of the Family. We shall find in its movement the idea of man's return to his true estate; we, contem- plating the doctrine of Evolution, behold the res- toration of man and of the social order out of their threatened dissolution. It is not simply a scientific fact, but it has a power of spiritual healing ; through it we see a continual rise and return to the positive condition of the Family ; we see not merely the generation of the Institu- tution, but also its regeneration, which is, first of all, to take place in our hearts, and to become a part of ourselves. Truly a spiritual catharsis has come to our age in the doctrine of Evolution, which may almost lay claim to being a new Gospel. It has passed out of the hands of the scientist, and has entered the spirit of the time as a renewed faith in the destiny of the race, saving many earnest souls from pessimism and despair. It makes for free- dom, we hold, carrying Nature herself always up toward the self-determined. Evolution is indeed 120 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. variously read by its supporters, some will see in it only the iron necessity of physical law. But it surely points to and in fact presupposes a "Will, an Ego at the center of all things. It calls for the complete circle of which it is the segment, and such a circle must ultimatel}'^ be self -evolved, in fact the total absolute Self. Coming back to the Family we found that its dissolution in the previous stage ended in the na- tural individual and reduced man to his starting- point. Now while the Family has this backward movement in modern societjs this tendency to drop down to its primitive unit, to its beginning, equally certain is it that the Family has shown the counter movement in a much stronger tend- ency, the rise from the physical individual of nature to the institutional individual of spirit. This very negative movement of the modern Family involves the positive one, the lapse must have its counterpart in the ascent. Hence the present upward movement is the negation of the negative forces already set forth ; the history of the Family is just the overcoming of the destruc- tive might of nature, passion, appetite — is the transcending of the lower more inadequate stages of the Family. Much attention has been paid in recent years to the Evolution of the Family by a number of patient investigators, and an enormous mass of facts has been collected. Naturally there have THE FAMILY. 121 been various attempts to organize this decidedly recalcitrant mass into an ordered Whole, which IS to take its due place in the science 'of Institu- tions. In the rise of the Family, we behold three main stages, which have an inner relation of growth, and which we shall epitomize before proceeding to a more detailed exposition in the following outline : — I. Natural Monogamy ; this involves the union of one male and one female during the pairing time, during gestation, and during the helpless period of physical infancy. II. Polygamy ; the breaking up the immediate Monogamy of Nature, by having a plurality of males or females or both in the unity of the Family. III. Institutional Monogamy ; the return to the union of one male and one female, which, however, is no longer the Natural Family merely, but is the Institutional Family, which has passed through and cast off Polygamy. As the sexual relation is common to man and the lowest animals, and as there are all grada- tions of it, one may well ask : at what point does the Family start into being? Or when can Mar- riage be said to exist? It is not easy to draw the line with precision, still some limit has to be seen, even if vaguely seen. As the great end of the Family is the having and rearing of offspring, so 122 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. la- this end must manifest itself in the pair when- ever they begin to show themselves parents, though in the most primitive way. Accordingly the Family involves the union of the opposite sexes, the duration of such union till after the birth of the offspring, and the pro- vision for them till they are able to help them- selves. As the offspring of man remains helpless a long time, the Human Family has an inherent tendency to be permanent. Then as the human child requires something far more than mere physical independence, Marriage grows to be the matter of a life-time. The movement of this growth from its natural stage up to its institu- tional fullness is what we shall now follow. I. Natural MoNOGAJiY. The immediate start- ing-point of Nature in the reproduction of the species may be said to be monogamous ; it is the relation of one to one and can be nothing else. Still further. Nature seems to choose its own, individual selects individual by an inner impulse or inclination ; animals show choice in taking their mates. In man this affinity of individuals becomes more pronounced, and is called love. Out of a mass of individuals of both sexes, each seeks and finds just the one and none other. To this passion of love there rises, under provo- cation and sometimes almost without provocation, its violent negative counterpart, namely the pas- sion of jealousy. THE FAMILY. 123 Man and the lower animals have these three fundamental emotions, or rather passions, of the Family — sexuality, love of the individual as such, and jealous}^ The whole movement of Evolution will show these passions transforming themselves out of their physical manifestation and bearing man upwards into an ethical, that is, institutional life. All three of these passions may be said to be in their very nature monogamous. They affirm decisively that this one is mine, hands oft", or a fio-ht. The chief source of the bitterest struo- o ~ gles among animals and among savages is Mo- nogamy, which is always being assailed and always being defended. Nor are such struggles unknown among civilized men. The result is that the state of Natural Monog- amy is not a placid, peaceful condition of domes- tic happiness, as has been sometimes imagined. On the contrary, there is in it fierce conflict, coupled with deep difference and opposition. The process of natural Evolution, like birth itself, is accompanied with throes of struggle, which is manifest from the great diversity seen in the state of Nature. The reader must always bear in mind that we are now considering the Monogamy of Nature, which is far enough from being pure and con- stant; on the contrary, it is very fluctuating and uncertain, boinir not vet made stable l)v Law and 124 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Institution, but subjected to the caprice and vio- lence of the phj'^sical individual. Still here is the germ Avhich is to develop into the institutional Family — the germ found in Nature herself, who may thus be declared to have a monogamous ten- dency ; truly she has a monogamous ideal in her soul, M'hich she will slowly realize with the ages. The present is an undeveloped potential stage, with all sorts of exceptions and variations, 3'et with one advancing main movement. We shall briefly give traces of it in the lower orders of animate existence, not forgetting to mark the fluctuations sideward and even backward which are characteristic of the stage before us. 1. It would appear that the first decisiv^e in- stances of the Monogamy of Nature occur among the Birds. Below them, the sexual relation of Invertebrates and Vertebrates seems to be wholly inconstant, and even parental care for the young is hardily discernible. Some exceptions have been noted by naturalists ; but the general rule appears to be that reproduction of kind begins and ends with the immediate sexual instinct. But with what seems almost a sudden spring, among the Birds Monogamy appears in a very l^ronounced form. Parental care of the young is shown by the mother, and also what is rarer, b}- the father. Both work together in building the nest, in feeding the young, even in hatching out the eggs. Both look after the fledgelings, and THE FAMILY. Ub defend them in case of necessity, till they become able to shift for themselves. Thus the end of the Family is attained. Such is the first picture of Natural Monogamy, striking and beautiful, even an example to man. Brehm, the famous naturalist, declares that true marriao-e is found only amonoj the Birds. The little child playing Birdling in the nest and the Mother-bird, is learnino^ the first lesson of Monoo'- am}', and unfolding the unconscious instinct of the Family. It is true that not all Birds are monogamous nor are they all good examples of domestic fidel- ity. Very familiar is the old rooster strutting amid his polygamous household in the barn-yard. In fact, the fowls of the air will show every stage of domesticity, from the utterly faithless cuckoo laying its egg in another's nest, to the love-bird which is said to pine away and die over its dead mate, united in life and in death. 2. But when Ave come to the Mammals another law seems to prevail. The paradise of the Bird- family is broken up ; Polygamy in many grades and forms enters the animal kingdom. The father for the mostpart disburdens himself of the care of his offspring; the mother, however, makes up his deficiency, nursing and providing for her young Avith strong affection. At this stage there is among brutes a kind of Matriarchate or rule of the mother, the father being often left out or 126 SOCIAL I.VSTITUTIOI^S. actually driven off by her, as he shows himself useless, or sometimes positively hostile to his own offspring. Yet even among the lower Mam- mals we do not find by any means uniformity in this matter; the males in certain cases, as the ■whale, the seal, the rein-deer (see Westermark, The History of Human Marriage ^ p. 12), and other animals, stay with the mother after the birth of the young, and protect the family. 3. But when we reach the Quadrumana, the highest among Mammals, the law seems to change gradually back again toward Monogamy. Un- doubtedly many species of the monkey and the ape are polygamous. But the simang, the orang- outang, and other man-like apes show decided leaniugs toward a monogamous state. The males, though often separated from the females, are seen with the young, evidently caring for them and defending them, thus sho wins' some degree of paternal responsibility, which naturally springs from a monogamous relation, at least among animals. The Gorilla, which is usually considered the animal nearest to man, has an interesting history in this connection. Mr. Darwin considers the Gorilla to be a polygamist (^Descent of Man, Univ. Ed., p. 245), but later observers declare that the male and female live with their young in one family. Both statements are probably true ; the Gorilla has his wife and familv, which he THE FAMILY. 127 protects; but he has also been obteerved taking a free range of the tropical forest. His stronger instinct is probably monogamous, but that does not hinder him from showing polygamous lapses. What Darwin cites in reference to a much lower animal, has pertinence in this connection ; " the lion in South Africa sometimes lives with a single female, but generally with more." The foregoing stage of the animal Family ( in- cluding man) is evidentl}'^ an uncertain, fluctuat- ing, somewhat chaotic stage. We call it Natural Monogamy, since its general trend is monogamous, though amid many variations, retrogressions, and contradictory tendencies. There is yet no fixed law of the Institution, no full development of the rational, permanent element of the Family. It is a potential state, containing the future of the Family, whose threads of existence are here floating in a sea of possibilities. There has been in recent years a good deal of discussion in regard to the beginnings of human marriage. Most anthropologists have believed that primitive man and woman lived in a state of [)romiscuity ; there was no marriage of individual to individual, but " a communal marriage; " that is, the whole community or tribe of males and females dwelt together in promiscuous intercourse, and the children belonged to the tribe or per- chance to the mother alone. Polyandry, still existent among a good many tribes in different 128 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. parts of the globe, is supposed by Mr. M'Len- nan and others to imply a previous condition of promiscuity in the sexual relation. On the contrary it has been stoutly affirmed that no such state of promiscuity has ever been found among primitive races, in the sense of being a general stage of the domestic development of mankind. "VVestermark has written a book (^Tlie History of Human Marriage) whose chief ob- ject is to show just the opposite. He brings together a great deal of evidence which indicates that the lowest races of man as well as the high- est species of animals are in the main monoga- mous. " This view is confirmed by many of the facts adduced in Darwin's Z^escen^ of Man. The work of Westermark has shaken, if not refuted the doctrine of promiscuity. The reader is aware from the preceding expo- sition that we hold the view of Westermark to be strongly confirmed by psychology. The original psychical nature of man leads him, yea drives him towards Monogamy. Those three funda- mental passions, bringing man and woman to- gether and cementing them into the unity of the Family — sexuality, love, and jealousy — are pri- marily monogamous, are deeply at work in the heart of the savage, and even of the animal. The inner movement of the soul thus corresponds to the outer movement of the fact which has been so copiously set forth by "Westermark in his book. THE FAMILY. 129 We cannot help adding that Westermark shows one grand fatality : he has no psychology and hence no true ordering principle in his work, for his so-called scientific method is not only shallow but chaotic. Still he has given us a very suggest- ive piece of work to which we gladly confess our obligations. Plainly does it appear that the soul of Nature herself, as far as she manifests herself in the domestic instinct, strives to be monoganous ; Mar- riage in its faintest beginning, and, as we shall see later, in its most highly developed end, means the one male and the one female in union. We say that Nature strives in this stage, for Natural Monogamy is a grand striving with many turns and lapses and recoils — a mighty struggle toward an ideal end. But this ideal end is not to be attained imme- diately, the Family has to pass through a new discipline. The Monogamy of Nature we see everywhere in a state of change and dissolution, being exposed to all the caprices of untamed pas- sion, which belongs to animal and savage life. The three passions already mentioned, which primarily tend to Monogamy, easily turn to an assault on the same. The strong man of the tribe, led by his appetite or his love, will take by force the wife of the weaker man. The result is a dual condition shows itself: the chieftains have several wives in a community which is other- 9 . 130 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. wise monogamous. Indeed the number of wives comes to indicate the superiority of the ruler over the mass of his subjects, and is taken as mark of his wealth, power and splendor. Thus dawns a new stage in the social history of the race. II. Polygamy. In this stag-e we no longer see the immediate unity of one male and one female constituting the Family, but multiplicity enters, first on the one side, then on the other, and finally on both sides — many males to one female, many females to one male, and also many females to many males. Such are the three lead- ing forms which Polygamy has taken in the Evo- lution of the Family. On the whole, Polygamy is a social advance upon Natural Monogamy, in which the married relation is so uncertain. This relation now be- comes more fixed and stronger, and beo;ins to be institutional. There is no doubt that Polygamy has been the training of mankind out of the Na- tural into the Spiritual Monogamy of the domestic Institution. It is the great intermediate stage in the total Evolution of the Family, and brings wdth it a certain degree of civilization. More peoples, who may be called civilized on this globe, are to-day practicing or permitting Polyg- amy by law and custom, than make up the total number of strictly monogamous peoples. It may, therefore, be considered in one sense a more universal phase of the Family than any other. THE FAMILY. 131 Still we must be careful always to note the reverse side of the picture : in a polygamous society very few can be practical polygamists. First, there is the limit of nature, which, on the whole, brings forth one woman to one-man. There are not enough females born on the earth, or in any considerable part thereof, to supply every man with even two wives. As already said. Nature is fundamentally monogamous, and asserts her instinct also in polygamous countries. In Egypt, saj^s Mr. Lane, not one husband in twenty has two wives. According to Syed Amir Ali, more than ninety-five per cent of the Moham- edans in India are at the present moment, either by conviction or necessity, monogamists. In- deed the custom of Polygamy meets with decided disapprobation among many educated followers of the Prophet, in spite of his example and the Koran. The same holds true of the vast quantit}'^ of humanity in China, Persia, Siam, Hindostan, and other Oriental lands where Polygamy exists (see examples in Westermark, op. cit. p. 438). In the second place, we see the decided social scission produced by Polygamy (or specially by Polygyny ) . Many wives become a badge of dom- ination, of pride, of distinction. Thus a sepa- ration begins to show itself between the great mass of the People and their Rulers, and unavoid- ably a conflict sets in, which often involves author- ity and even religion. So the evolutionary pro- 132 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. cess will be seen in many phases working through Polygamy. The Orient has been and still is polygamous, but owing to contact with the West as well as inner causes, there is a strong social fermentation going on just in this sphere among its most advanced peoples. Finally we cannot help observing the inner trouble and dissolution which must be always threatening the polygamous Family. Many hus- bands or many wives must mean many quarrels. The woman, educated and independent, will in the end destroy Polygamy, and this is really the wedge which has just begun to enter with might Oriental civilization. Still it is curious to observe how deeply in- grown with human consciousness Polygamy may become. A story is told of an intelligent chief, believing in progress, but a polygamist, who "was perfectly scandalized at the utter barba- rism" of living one's whole life with only one wife, and never parting from her until separated by death. Indeed such a state was lower than barbarism, it descended to animality, being " just like the Wanderoo monkeys ' ' living off yonder in the woods and mountains. In one sense the chief was rio;ht. He had observed the stage of Natural Monogamy (seen in many monkeys and the higher Quadrumana, which are monoga- mous), and he justly deemed his own polygamous state as more advanced than that. But when he THE FAMILY. 133 was told that all civilized Europe was monoga- mous, he was deeply shocked, and could only com- pare it with the Wanderoo monkeys, and pity such a civilization, when placed beside his own. (See T)ixvw\rv s Descent of Man, \]mv.^A.^\). 675.) Thus we find an inner movement or evolution in Polygamy, of which we have already noted three kinds or stages. Or we may say three forms of multiplicity in the domestic relation in- stead of unity — male or female manyness or both. Which of these stages is to come first? As we see the movement, the last mentioned, the plurality of both wives and husbands in one Fam- ily — is the psychical beginning, though this can- not be shown to be always the strict historical order. 1. The first stage we may name the Consan- guine Marriage, or perchance the Punaluan ; this last word is Hawaian, and is taken from the lan- guage of the people among whom this form of Marriage was first distinctly observed. It is con- stituted by a group of brothers marrying a group of sisters or of women not necessarily related ; that is, each brother is the husband of all the women and each woman is the wife of all the brothers. Conversely a group of sisters may marry a group of related or unrelated husbands. The same form of Marriage is still found anions: the Todas of India, and traces of it are said to exist elsewhere. 134 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. It is evident that in the present case family has a tendency to marry family, the individual is not the unit of marriage. In a similar manner wives have been supposed to be common to all mem- bers of a given clan or tribe, out of which the Family as a union of individuals gradually emeroed. But on the whole the Consanguine Family is a rare phenomenon, and can never have been general ; intrusion into it is too easy. One fact, however, is certain: in such a rela- tion paternity becomes doubtful, the child be- longs with certainty to its mother alone. Here- with rises into view a new condition, which has been called metrocracy or the rule of the mother, through whom and not through the father kin- ship was reckoned and property was inherited. The Consanguine Marriage, if it once aro:>e, would not hold out long. The great object of the Family is the child, and it is nowthe woman's, whoever be the father. In the sphere of the Family she becomes the absolute possessor of its treasure, namely the child, giving to the same her title and property. The preceding terms, Consanguine and Pan- aluan, as applied to the Family, are the coinage of the brain of Dr. Lewis Morgan, w^hose serv- ices in the present field are of the highest. The Evolution of the Family he divides into five suc- cessive stages (see his Ancient /Society^ p. 385). According to Morgan the Consanguine Family THE FAMILY. 135 " was founded upon the intermarriage of broth- ers and sisters, own and collateral in a group." That is, the primordial Family arose from the brothers of one Family marrying their own sis- ters, not severally but in a mass. This position has been strongly attacked on all sides, and is at the present time pretty generally discredited. Dr. Morgan himself admits that such a Consan- guine Family as he describes does not exist any- where to-day (p. 401), in savage or barbarous societies. He infers it from existino; marriage customs, which, however, have probably a dif- ferent explanation. But the Punaluan Family does exist and must be taken into the account. ' ' This is founded upon the intermarriage of several sisters, with each other's husbands, who are not necessarily kins- men of each other." And the reverse Family also is possible, namely the intermarriage of sev- eral brothers with each other's wives, the latter not being necessarily related. Thus the blood of different Families intermingles in the Punaluan Family, though on one side it is still consanguine. Hence this latter term may be applied to it with- out ambiguity, inasmuch as Morgan's Consan- guine Family has been substantially eliminated from science. A distinction which has maintained itself was first introduced by Mr. M'Lcnnan, that between endogamy and exogamy. There are many un- 136 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. civilized peoples Avho avoid marrying outside of their own tribe; these are called endogaraous. On the other hand there are many uncivilized peoples who avoid marrying inside their own tribe, these are called exogamous. The value of this distinction is strongly questioned by Dr. Morgan (^ Ancient Society, p. 511), and it has given rise to some confusion. Every people is doubtless both endoo-amous and exogfamous in a way; it has a limit inside of which Marriasre is not customary (usually that of blood-kin) and it has also a limit outside of which Marriage is not customary (that of class, caste, race). Thus Marriage is located between an inner and outer circle of prohibition ; it should not take place among the too near or the too remote. This marriageable territory for man and woman is un- doubtedly widening with civilization, but the outer limit, specially of race, still exists for even the most emanicipated. In the Consanguine Family (as before de- scribed) the mother is emphatically chosen to be the maintainer of the infantile domestic Institu- tion, since Nature points her out as mother of her child, while the father is or may be quite un- known. Now in this child centers the grand purpose of the Institution, hence rises the supreme importance, indeed almost the sole im- portance of the mother at this stage. Authority passes into her hands, and with it comes a THE FAMILY. 137 new stage of the Family, though still polyg- amous. 2. Polyandry is, in general, that form of the Family in which the wife has several husbands. It has been shown to be far more prevalent among primitive peoples than the preceding Con- sanguine Marriage, through which many tribes probably never passed. But Polyandry seems to show so many traces in all parts of the globe, and among so many civilized peoples past and present that it may well lay claim to being a universal stage in the Evolution of the Family. Polyandry has two well-marked classes. One is called the Thibetan Polyandry, in which the woman's husbands are brothers; this phase of Polygamy seems to be derived from the preceding- phase, the Consanguine Marriage, and is said to be more common than the second kind of Poly- andry, in which the husbands are not related (called Nair Polyandry ; see Giddings, PniicijyJes of Sociology, p. 155). It was Bachofen, the Swiss jurist, who first called attention to the fact that " kinship through mothers only " prevailed among certain peoples of antiquity. He moreover came to the conclu- sion that this stage preceded the stage of kinship through males, and that there was among prim- itive peoples a supremacy of woman, a kind of metrocracv or matriarchate. M'Leniian and Mor- 138 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. gau entered the same lield with extensive research, followed by other investigators. These results have met with contradiction. Numerous savage tribes have been cited which do not trace kinship through the mother, but through the father (Westermark, History of Marriage, p. 98). Thus it is probable that some primitive peoples have quite escaped the matriarchate, but most have gone through it apparently. There is undoubtedly a stage in Human Society which tends to Polyandry, in a more or less pronounced degree. But it does not presuppose an antece- dent condition of sexual promiscuity, as M'Len- nan and others have thought. On the contrary, its prior form is rather Monogamy, as we have previously endeavored to show. Still Polyandry and the matriarchate are found among all races, Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian, and in both hem- ispheres, though some tribes of these races seem to have quite escaped or to have quickly passed through it. The evidence, then, compels us to accept Poly- andry as a stage in the general Evolution of the Famih', and also as an advance upon Natural Monogamy. The mother and child are not onh' recognized, but emphasized. This primary rela- tion of the Family is separated and thereby made distinct in human consciousness. In the previous condition the stress is more upon the sexual rela- tion, the man and woman, but now the stress THE FAMILY. 139 passes to mother and child — a considerable step forward in the development of the Family. Still further, Polyandry may be regarded as the discipline of motherhood. The woman as the bearer of the child has to have her race-trainino- to her task. She is the center of the Family with its responsibility ; the mother alone now exists in a domestic sense, the father beino; a vanishing element, perchance unknown ; the chil- dren are hers exclusively, and are called by her name (or totem) and are related to her kindred alone. Clearly the Mother of the Race is here put under training ; man is to have a mother be- fore he has a father, fatherhood beino- a later de- velopment as we shall see, though physically first. Nature points out emphatically the mother, but she (Nature) is inclined to hide the father who has to be unfolded and revealed by Institutions. We can also see that the wife is now absolutely the home-maker, the home is hers, and round it the various husbands may revolve in the distance as a group of satellites. Property, too, is hers, and descends through her to her children ; her own brothers having no recognized children of their own, in a polyandrous state of society, would recognize hers as their kin and give them protection and propert}'. The woman in Poly- andry would likewise have her preference, to a degree she might be able to select the father of her child — which tendency is toward the disso- 140 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. lution of the polyandrous relation. Naturally she would choose the one she admires — the strong, the heroic, the better man among her husbands. Thus the monogamous instinct makes itself valid against Polyandry. And the man of power would put in some heavy strokes for sole pos- session of the woman, being impelled by two of those primitive passions of the human soul, love and jealousy, and possibly by some others, such as avarice. Thus Polyandry has in it decided elements of dissolution, but while it lasts it gives to the mother greater power tlian she has ever had in any state of society since. It has been called Metrocracy or the Government of the Mother, all other forms of Government afterwards being Androcracies or Governments of Men, such as democracy, aristocracy, monarchy, etc. But specially we may deem Polyandry, in the Evolu- tion of the Family, as the grand training of the Mother to the love and care of her child, upon whom her life is centered by being made hus- bandless, or, what is the next thing to it, many- husbanded. Already we have indicated the seeds of disso- lution in Polyandry. Both love and jealousy will assail it from both sides, male and female. Then heredity will play in. The love of the mother for her offspring, concentrated and intensified by Polyandry, must pass to her son, who in the THE FAMILY. Ul course of the evolutionary cycle will also feel the mother's intense love of the child. Slowly the man, the father, will transform the Family that he too may have offspring as well as the mother, and may know it as his own. Indeed he will now evolve an institution which will make him reasonably certain of his paternity. Nature, as already said, leaves no doubt as to the mother, but she has not been so gracious to the father, who has, accordingly, to help himself out by a new social arrangement. 3. This is Polygyny, that form of the Family in which the man has two or more wives. The center now shifts from the female to the male who is the domestic unit ; the husband is one, the wives are many. Polygyny is a social stage which is, on the whole, more advanced than Polyan- dry, and far more common. Its range is very great, it reaches down to the animal, yet is found among many civilized nations. Indeed the most extended of all world-civilizations is the Oriental, and it is essentially poly gy nous. Again we must see in this form of society a great training of humanity unto the end of the Family. Very manifestly the father is wheeled into line and is made to take up his domestic bur- den. For it is not mere sensuality which pro- duces Polygyny, the sexual passion could be gratified at an outlay of much less trouble and expense. It is the man's love of offspring, his 142 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. desire of fatherhood, which he can have inherited from a long line of maternal ancestors. He be- comes the head of the Family, in a way the head of several Families. He takes several wives and puts them under stringent control in order to safe- guard his paternit}-. Thus the Patriarchate rises into view, furnish- ing a decided contrast to the Matriarchate, the one being based on Polygyny, the other on Poly- andry. The Patriarchal Family is familiar to us from the Hebrew Bible, but we have had no Matriarchal Literature till the present genera- tion. In Polyg3aiy the woman is put under a new training for the Family. She is therein to be disciplined out of her polyandrous consciousness into fidelity to one man. Polygj-ny springs from the husband's distrust of the wife, and so he builds an institution, which puts her into a harem, guards her with eunuchs, and makes her veil her face when she goes forth into the world outside of her domestic Avails. A bitter disci- pline it seems to us, still we may find the ground of its iustification. The father is goino- to secure fatherhood at all hazards against the hitherto polyandrous nature of the woman. Meanwhile she through harsh servitude is moving toward freedom, she is getting ready for Monogamy, of which she Avill become the guardian, exacting from the man the same fidelity toward her which THE FAMILY. 143 she gives to him, and whicii he injustice must grant. In Polygjnj , the father having different sets of children and wives has a training unto justice, since he must settle their disputes, their conflict- ing claims. Indeed, he must orsanize them into a kind of State, the patriarchal State, and bring them all under impartial judgment and the law. Though he be the father, he must also be the judge and the ruler. His power is absolute, and he may become the tyrant, still he has some re- straint in affection and perchance in his sense of justice. The childrennow take the father's name, and the propertj^ is his and descends through him to his heirs. The Patriarchate has in it the train- ing of the father into the ruler, and thus forms one line of transition from Family to State. Moreover Polygyny is connected in the Ori- ental mind with splendor, many wives indicate much power and wealth. The poor cannot be polygynous even in polygynous countries. This makes a social distinction which shows in time a disintegrating power. Polygyny has shown itself to be a far stronger and more persistent element in the Evolution of the Family than Polyandry ; still it too dissolves and passes into a higher stage. The father must transmit his qualities to his daughter as well as to his son ; the woman, born in Polygyny, must finally inherit enough of his independence and 144 ^SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. love of rule to protest against her chains. She will also feel that the very purpose of the insti- tution has reached its end when she is conscious of her womanly fidelity. And the man, growing in the consciousness of justice, must recognize the claim. Moreover a w^hole people cannot be polygynous, nature forbids ; only a small fraction of the total population have or can have more than one wafe. Thus Polygyny can never be compulsor}', a law of the nation ; at most it is permissive and for the few. It belongs to the Oriental despotism, or rather to the theocracy, in which God's chosen favorites have the divine privilege of many wives. In the Evolution of the Family, Polygyny passes into Monogamy, which must rest on trust and love. The wife is faithful to the one, not through force but in freedom, and shows a char- acter in the West quite unknown in the Orient. It has been often remarked that the women of the Hebrew Bible are far from being an ideal set, beoinnino- with Mother Eve. It looks as if she were in continual sullen protest against her insti- tutional world, which brought out the devil in her nature. Woman, according to the Hebrew story, is the cause of man's fall and Avickedness. There is a tendency in Oriental literature and folk- lore, and hence in Oriental consciousness to re- gard the feminine as the incarnation of the Satan- ic. The Eternal-womanly (Das Ewig-weibliche) THE FAMILY. 146 belongs to the Occident, certainly not to Judea or the Orient. It starts distinctly with Homer. Polygyny could not well make a good woman ; we may almost affirm that it stands to her credit that in such a condition she showed her negative na- ture to such a degree that the Oriental man has given her a bad name. The advance out of Polygyny is a great step for the man, but a greater one for the woman. Rel- atively at least she has won freedom and equal- ity — freedom from suspicious surveillance, and equality in selfhood ; for her one undivided Self she receives one undivided Self in return. This brings us to the third great stage in the Evolution of the Family. III. Institutional Monogamy. Already we have noticed an undercurrent of Monogamy both in Polyandry and Polygyny, that is, permitted Monogamy. But now it is to become compul- sory, enforced by Law and Institution, as well as sanctioned by Morality. Monogamy is for all, universal, or can be made so; it is the blessing which the whole people, high and low, rich and poor, king and subject, may share and finally must share, if they enter the Family at all. The ruler, whatever be his grandeur, must be monog- amous too. Thus it is an advance in equality, in democracy, if you please; certainly a phase of individual freedom versus absolutism. Very naturally Institutional Monogamy was definitively 10 146 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. born and vindicated in Greece, being there ele- vated into a portion of the spiritual heritage of the race. "VVe may repeat in this connection that neither Polyandry nor Polygyny can be raade into a uni- versal principle for a nation, and hence can never be enacted into a law, which is binding on all. Just the opposite is Monogamy, which becomes universal of its own inherent power, being cap- able of legalit}'. Thus we reach the stage which may be called Institutional Monogamy, since it is the law both statutory and moral. The first stage, that of Natural Monogamy, is the immedi- ate monogamic impulse of Nature; this remains, but no longer as rude physical desire, being now mediated throuo:h the Institution. A great period in the history of man it was when Monogamj' permanently arose and became institutional. Not in a day w^as the transition accomplished, still the point in time and place can be distinctly marked. Europe begins Avith Insti- tutional Monogamy, which is more than any other fact the salient characteristic of Occidental civ- ilization. The Family changes wholly when it passes out of Polygamy into Monogamy; the woman, the child, the father, are transformed by the new domestic Institution, the basis of all other Institutions. The great change can be summed up in the statement that man and woman too can now become free, institutionallv free. THE FAMILY. 147 It is« the enduring glory of the old Greek world that it established, proclaimed, defended, and fought for Monogamy, and thus made the spirit- ual passage out of polygamous Asia into mono- gamous Europe. Greece was born through the Trojan War which was waged for the restoration of Helen, the one wife, to her husband, when she had been stolen by an Oriental prince. The W'hole Iliad rests uponthe conception of the monogamous Family, which has been violated by Troy, but is asserted by all Hellas with its army and ten years' war against the Trojan city, which will not give back the wife on demand of the Greeks. Priam, ruler of Troy, has a dubious, if not a polygamous, household, though Hector and Andromache are supremely monogamous. But Hector hates the deed of Paris, the seducer, advises the restoration of Helen, and thinks his country wrong, though he fights in its defense when it is assailed. Thus the great poem which opens the Occident has as its underlying institutional theme the monogamous Family, showing the violation thereof and the punishment of that violation. The Iliad sings the prelude of European civilization, attuning itself to the keynote which throbs in the tale of Helen, whose theme is the restoration of the one wife to the one husband. When we look at the Odyssey, we find the same fact intensified. First of all is the fidelity of the wife Penelope, who is put to the hardest trial 148 SOCIAL lySTITUTIONS. possible, but never flinches in her devotion to her husband. Here the monogamous tie is celebrated in the woman beyond any example in literature. Of the same character is Arete who is the womanly soul of that ideal Phaeacian world, hardly yet realized in these days. Nor has the old poet spared the guilty wife — witness the fate of faithless Clytemnestra. It may be said, therefore, that Homer has written the Bible of Monogamy for the Occi- dent. In this regard he has been supremely the educator of the European consciousness. He first assigned to the woman her true position in the Family, and flashed the outlines of her char- acter upon the future, so that she is still fulfilling his prophecy. Incalculable has been his influ- ence in moulding the domestic Institution of the Occident, and along with it necessarily other In- stitutions. "We go back to the old Greek bard, and, after communing with his shapes, we feel often compelled to say : Our age has not yet altogether overtaken Homer. As the Hebrews wrote the Bible of Monothe- ism for the Occident, so Homer wrote the Bible of Monogamy for the Occident. We are, indeed, the heirs of both, yet we have rejected a part of both inheritances. The Polygamy of the Hebrew we cannot accept, nor can we accept the Polythe- ism of Homer. The religious Bible belongs to the Semite, the secular Bible belongs to the THE FAMILY. 149 Greek; both are fountain-heads of our institu- tional world, which has Just these two main streams, secular and religious. The Greek had many Gods, but insisted upon having one wife (as in the story of Helen) ; the Hebrews on the contrary had many wives (as in the case of Solomon) but insisted upon having the one God. Christendom has accepted the unity in both in- stances and rejected the multiplicity. Homer, therefore, has gone in advance and set up for future civilization the ideal of Institutional Mo- nogamy. We may next briefly note how this ideal has been realized in the historic fact, by taking a glance at the chief peoples of Europe since Homer's time in regard to the present matter. 1 . If Homer be assigned to the legendary age of Greece, it will have to be confessed that the historic age of that country fell behind its poet's ideal. At Athens there was a strict Monogamy by law and custom ; but the wife was secluded in the home, attending to the round of domestic duties, while the husband often indulged in a good deal of laxity in his sexual relations. The prominence of the Homeric woman as the up- holder of the Family quite vanishes in later Greek life, though Attic tragedy sometimes re- called her former independence, as in the Anti- gone of Sophocles. Plato in his Repuhlic pro- posed to reconstruct entirely the position of the 150 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Athenian woman of his age, giving her equal opportunities and rights with the man. But he destroys the Family, and shows himself the foe of Monogamy — which fact may be deemed one ground of his opposition to Homer, though he assigns another. Here the poet is far greater than the philosopher. In Eonie also the monogamous relation pre- vailed, and the Roman wife, though completely subject to her husband, had a position of honor and authority. The Roman Family, however, went to pieces with the dissolution of the Repub- lic, and from the same general cause. 2. Passing out of Heathendom into Christen- dom we observe a dual position of the Family, a side of elevation and a side of degradation, a purification of it on the one hand and a dispar- agement of it on the other. In the New Testa- ment very meager are the statements of Christ in reference to the domestic Institution, though he evidently regarded it as monogamous, and as a tie not to be dissolved except for one cause, infidelity on the part of husband or Avife. But Paul has a low opinion of woman, and evidently regards marriage as a necessary evil. He still keeps the degraded Hebrew notion Avhich springs from Polygamy. Some of his rea- sons why marriage is to be tolerated can only be pronounced immoral. Christ and the apostles generally held aloof from the domestic THE FAMILY. 151 Institution, and tlieir example went over into the Church. In early and medieval Christianity celibacy began its domination, which was carried to such an extent that holiness was conceived to be incon- sistent with the domestic Institution. There is no doubt that religion took a strongl}^ antago- nistic attitude to the Family ; the entire hierarch- ical organization of the Church became celibate. It is true that the clergy placed upon marriage certain restrictions which tended to Monogamy as well as to the permanence and purity of the married relation ; but it was all done from the outside with a kind of toleration and condescen- sion on the part of the priesthood, who did not and could not set the example to their flock in their lives. In fact the confession nmst be made that marriage in early heathen Greece and Rome was a more profoundly religious act than in the medieval Christian world. Logically the doc- trine of celibacy means the extinction of the human race in proportion to its holiness ; to make man good he must be destroyed. Against this negative tendency of the religious Institution rose a mighty reaction in course of centuries. In order to save himself man returns to antiquity and revives its secular Institutions with its culture and its freedom. This brings us to the next stage. 3. The Reformation was specially a new birth 152 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. of the Family, for which it did more than for any other Institution. With this renascence of the Family came a renascence of humanity, a fresh humanization of the world. Celibacy in particular was cast off as hostile to man; the Family was lifted out of its antagonism to the holy life, and through it religion was made to stream over into the secular world and assist in its progress toward freedom. The great poet of this renascence is Shakes- peare, who has given expression to it more com- pletely and more beautifully than any other writer or artist. In his portrayal of the charac- ter of woman and her devotion to the domestic Institution, he recalls his eldest poetic brother, ancient Homer. In Shakespeare's comedies, mar- riage is the grand end of Love, which thus finds its fruition in the domestic Institution. In one of his dramas, Measure for Measure, he brings directly before us the above-mentioned institu- tional element of the Reformation ; a monk and a nun are introduced, who, however, have to return to the secular life from which they have fled, in order to purify it and impart to it their virtue. The outcome of the play is that they marry each other, wherein monastic celibacy is shown passing over into the domestic Institution, in which is to be found the new holy life. The preceding view of the Family belongs chiefly to Northern or Teutonic Europe, in which THE FAMILY. 158 the Reformation prevailed. In Southern or Latin Europe the aspect of the domestic Institution is somewhat different and it is certainly weaker, less prolific, less influential. Particularly in France the Family seems to be losing its repro- ductive power, whatever be the cause. The future development of the Family will probably continue on the lines of Institutional Monogamy, which insists primarily upon the re- lation of one man and one woman, protecting and defending the same by law. New problems are thrusting themselves upon the domestic In- stitution, particularly from the side of the woman, whose position in a number of important respects is changing in the modern era. Woman, especially in America, is now being educated on a par with men ; the social vocations are thrown open to her on every side. Still her chief voca- tion must remain that of being the mother of mankind. This limit is draw^n so firmly upon her that there is no escape. The Family must continue supremely her Institution, and in it she must find her true freedom. Of course there will be exceptions, the ups and downs of life may turn her away from marriage, and she must be allowed to choose freely whether she will or not take upon herself her sex's main burden. The complete institutional freedom of the Family demands that her Free Will must will the repro- duction of the Free- Will, which has been stated 154 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. to be the end and purpose of the domestic Insti- tution. Such is a brief statement of Institutional Monogamy, as it has unfolded itself in European civilization. Its first prophetic note was sung by ancient Homer, who has set forth the monog- amous ideal for all succeeding ages, particuhirly through his female characters. With him our literature begins, for without the love, of man and woman there is no Occidental literature, at least not in any universal sense. Through the Greek and Eoman, through the early Christian and Medieval periods, Monogamy has remained the iftstitutional basis of the Family, till it has at- tained its present development. Thus we have again reached our starting-point, the positive Family. Nor must we forget that the human Family, ere it attained its monogamous stage, went through a long training in other forms of the domestic relation. These have been cursorily treated in the preceding Evolution of the Family, whose manifold forms we need not here repeat- Such is the total process of the domestic Insti- tution. Some Observations on tlie Family. We have now set forth the three grand stages of the Fam- ily — Positive, Negative, and Evolutionary — which are always existent in ever}' people, and are always in a process with one another, form- THE FAMILY. 155 ing the total movement of the domestic Institu- tion. Now as the Family is the source of all Institutions, so this movement will be found in them all, and orderinof them accordingr to its fundamental stages. The Family transmits its psychical organization also to its institutional progeny. 1. From the preceding exposition we see that the development of Institutional Monogamy has taken place chiefly in the Aryan race. Yet this characteristic is not racial, for many Asiatic- Aryans are polygamous. Nor have all European Aryans been monogamous ; the ancient Germans, Slavs, Scandinavians practiced polygyny. Not till the Aryan race had been passed through the Greco-Roman alembic, was Monogamy secured to civilization. Even since then, however, many relapses have taken place. Christianity has not infrequently tolerated polygyny; St. Augustine has expressly said that he did not condemn it, and Luther allowed Philip of Hessen to marry two women, " since Christ is silent on the subject of polygyny." The Merovingian kings prac- ticed it, and royalty has hardly abandoned a cer- tain form of it to-day. After the terrible de- struction of males during the Thirty Years' War some German states legally sanctioned bigamy (see "NVestermark, Huradn Marriage, p. 434), which was a heathenish Teutonic relapse to the Germans of Tacitus. Institutional Monogamy 156 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. is, therefore, not Aryan, not European, not even Christian originally, but belongs to Greco- Roman antiquity, which made it the foundation stone of all future civilization of the best form. This is not saying that both Greeks and Romans did not often violate its principle. 2. The various stages of relapse in the Per- verted Family (see third phase of the Negative Family) are reversions from former stages of the Evolution of the Family, wherein we note that what was once progress becomes later retro- gression, and unethical besides. The woman, who, in a monogamous society, lapses to poly- andry, is unethical; the same is true of the man who, in a monogamous society, goes back to polygyny. Thus we observe that Ethics has ultimately an institutional origin, and the moral conscience is really a product and growth of the development of Institutions, which becomes an organic element of every normal Self. The su- preme virtue of man is, accordingly, what may be called institutional virtue, that virtue whose habit is to will institutional Will in its full actuality. 3. There is a dispute among naturalists as to whether the higher Quudrumana are social, whether they live in gangs or in pairs, or even lead solitary lives for 'the most part. The Go- rilla is declared to be not gregarious, and also the Chimpanzee, by competent observers. The THE. FAMILY. 157 Ourang-outang is well-known for his solitary habits. It has been, accordingly, supposed that our fruit-eating, half -human ancestor must have had a good deal of the same character. In fact many of the primitive sorts of mankind show to-day a total lack of association beyond the Family; no tribe, no communal life, or only the faintest traces thereof can be found. It may, therefore, be said that it is the Family which trains man towards and into Society. He must first be domesticated ere he can be socialized. Already we have noted the part which domestication plays in every Family whose origin dates from to-day in civilization ; every man and woman after being married have to go through the process of being domesticated. But the race also has gone through just that process too, starting (let us suppose) with some frugiv- orous anthropoid ape roaming the primeval woods in solitary selfishness, gathering and eat- ing nuts and berries and wild fruits. Sorely does such a being need domestication, and he gets it through untold seons of discipline, till he at last becomes not only domestic, but also social. In a certain degree every married pair has to pass through afresh this training of the race. 4. There is a great people, reputed to be nearly one-third of the human species, also highly civ- ilized in many respects, which has never fully unfolded beyond the Family into the other secu- IbS SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. lar Institutions. The Chinese have a vast State, but it is theoretically, and, as far as possible, practically one Family, at whose head stands the father, the emperor, who is absolute, and who regards the people as his children in tutelage. The all-penetrating virtue which is inculcated by education in Confucius and practiced universally is domestic affection (pie fas), which undoubtedly has its place everywhere and has its beautiful side always, but which in China quite supplants other virtues and stifles free development, in fact collides deeply with Free-Will. The son, even when married, is under his father, and his father under the grandfather, and the latter, if alive, is under his dead ancestors. The Family is doubt- less the primal institutional unit, the germinal cell out of which all Institutions have unfolded, but China seems to have taken this unit and crystallized it into one enormous homogeneous mass of cells with little or no inner development into other forms of institutional life. This is the peculiarity of Chinese civilization as distinct from Aryan. Still not without opposition has all this taken place even in China. Confucius and Mencius in- culcate the right of revolution along with their doctrine of filial piety ; the parent must do his duty, that is, must keep his son under, else the latter will rebel. There was once a Chinese emperor who sought to destroy all books, all TEE FAMILY. 169 records of the past, and have China begin over again, but he did not succeed. 5. In Marriage, if the union be as complete as it ought to be, it must cement the twain out- wardly and inwardly in a triple fashion. First there is the unity of passion, the physical element. Secondly, there is the unity of emotion, in which the two souls are one — love. Thirdly, there is • the unity of intellect, in which Thought itself gets married and gives up its isolation. Not only the body but also the heart, not only the heart but also the head is to share in the domestic Institu- tion, when the Marriage is complete. The absence of any one of these three elements makes the union less strong. Physically a good basis for Marriage is not given if the man or woman be decrepit, deformed, or afflicted wdth the taint of inherited disease. The vast mass of marriages must rest mainly upon the second element, love, which is the emotional unity, and which ought to be permanent, yet has to be re- nouncible, as experience shows. But in the modern world and specially in the Occident, the third element is rising into prominence, chiefly because of the higher education of the woman, who is inclined to look "with favor upon the man that can satisfy her head as well as her heart, she insisting that her whole Self must get married and not a part of herself. The cultured woman must be wedded in her culture, otherwise there 160 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. is a gfiD in the marriage, which is apt to grow wider with the years. Sometimes the man, but of tener the woman after marriage develops through study and reading into a new stage of culture which shakes or even breaks the old tie. We have called this third stage of marriage a modern one, yet it occurs in isolated cases even in antiquity. Plutarch has told us of Portia, wife of Brutus, who shared with her husband the study of philosophy, and insisted upon sharing the secrets of his brain when he was enojao-ed in the conspiracy against Cagsar. Shakespeare has picked up this trait of Portia in his drama of Julius Ccesar, and set it forth with a daring prominence, and with a prophetic outlook upon the coming woman. She insists upon knowing her husband's thoughts, and declares, if she is excluded from them, if she is not married to his ntellect also, " Portia is Brutus' harlot, not his wife." A stunning sentence, but having many a recent counterpart both in word and deed. 6. The woman must also be free in the Family, institutionally free ; she must will Free-AVill in the reproduction of the Person, and this must not be forced upon her, nor is she to obey blindly sexual instinct. In other words she must will motherhood in order to be free in her Institution, she must consciously will its end, which is the existence of a new Free-Will in the world. Thus the Family secures her end, her "Will, making it THE FAMILY. 161 actual. The woman in her supreme function must be a Free-Will producing Free-Will; her freedom is what creates freedom in her descend- ants ; an enslaved woman cannot well give birth to free citizens. The mothers of the people, willino^ the existence of Free-Will in and through the domestic Institution transmit their character to their sons and bring forth a nation of freemen. Of course the father is also to have a hand in this business. 7. In polygamous society we have seen the man carefully secluding the woman and compel- ling her fidelity by many an external precaution. It was the hard training of the woman out of the preceding stage of Polyandry, and her prepara- tion for Monogamy. Nature secures motherhood? but Institutions have to secure fatherhood. Here lies the reason why monogamous society still punishes the woman's infidelity more severely than the man's. She is the guardian of the man's blood, of the true descent from him, whereas he is not the guardian of her blood, of her lineage. The wife can give to the husband his own son, or another man's son, if she is faithless ; but he can never impose on her another woman's child, whatever be his infidelity. In true Monogamy, of course, the husband should be as faithful as the wife. 8. The Renascence was the new birth of many things, among others of the Family, which then 11^ Ifi3 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. rose out of its somewhat discredited medieval position. The result was that the Family began building a new Home, a worthy temple for its indwelling spirit; hence domestic Architecture sprang into existence. The palaces of the great Italian Families in Florence, Eome and Venice have made an epoch in the artistic construction of the private residence which has continued its influence down to our own day. For the Family as a free Institution must also build its dwelling- place artistically as well as Church or State. 9. The Literature of the Family has been al- luded to once or twice in the preceding account, and it perhaps constitutes the greater part of human writing. Indeed the Family is probably the genetic source of Literature as it is of all In- stitutions. Love has begotten song and its many forms, and still drives the human being to utter himself in exalted speech more powerfully than any other emotion. The generative Institution has generated poetry naturally, in order to ex- press its deepest character. With Love rises the need of expression and of mirroring the Family to the individual, who there- by becomes aAvare of its principle and its move- ment. The young man and the young woman seek to be conscious of the Family ; it is that toward which they are going, and their strongest instinct is to know their relations and their re- sponsibilities in that Institution. Now there is a THE FAMILY. 168 realm, in fart, an Institution whose function is to reveal themselves to themselves, and thereinto brinof to their consciousness the nature, the duties and the conflicts of the domestic Institution, and indeed of the entire institutional world. This is the main function of Literature and Art, both of which we shall later see to be phases of the great Educative Institution, whose chief object is to re- produce and keep alive and active in the human soul the spirit of all Institutions, and among them specially the spirit of the Family. CHAPTER SECOND.— SOCIETY. We have at present reached the second stage in the total process of the Secular Institution, of which the first stage has just been given — the Family. The Will now utters or realizes itself in an object which thereby becomes Property, or the u'illed Product; here we note the primal psychi- cal act of separation in the present sphere. This willed Product, however, is to be passed through Societ}^ or the Social Whole in some form, and returned to the individual for his sustenance. Thus his bodily and other Wants are mediated through the Social Institution, instead of being gratified immediately, or on the first impulse. By means of such an Institution, not one man (164) SOCIETY. 165 alone can live, but all men can live together, and mutually help satisfy one another's needs. The social Wants have been usually summed up as those of food, raiment, and shelter. Three outer coverings of the inner Self we may regard them ; the body is a covering which is reproduced by food, raiment is a covering for the body, and shelter is a covering for both, that is, for the body clothed. So the Self surrounds itself with three external layers in succession, which consti- tute its fundamental Wants, whereby it is made to actualize itself in Society, and this may be deemed its deepest need, that of self -actualiza- tion in the Institution. The term Society is here used in the sense of the Economic Body, the Industrial Order, the Commercial World . The word is often employed in a wider meaning than this, embracing quite what the present book calls Social Institutions. While the two usages of the word and its deriv- atives cannot and need not be wholly eschewed, we shall try, in the present chapter especially, to adhere to the narrower and more definite sense. We may derive Society externally from the Family, since a number of Families associated together in almost any sort of order might be called a Society. But such a relation does not count for much in this connection, as we may conceive of a collection of Families forminsr the 166 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. clan, the village, or indeed the nation. Society, then, means something more than the mere out- ward bringinsr together of certain units called Families, nor is it simply an assemblage of individuals. Society, as here conceived, is an Institution, which is always human Will actualized, made existent in the world and functioning there, whose end is to render valid Free AVill. This, as already stated, is the common prin- ciple of all Institutions, but Society is a unique form of actualized Will, having its own special character, which it derives from its starting- point, namely Want. Man has Wants; to satisfy them in a rational, that is, universal way, he builds Society. The end and the product of the antecedent Family was the Person, born, reared, and in a degree educated; he may now be conceived to hav^e graduated from that Institution and to have entered Society. As the result of existence he has a number of Wants ; supremely he is a needcr of things physical, and perchance intellectual. He was born a wantful creature into the Family, which has out of its grace supplied his early Wants ; but sooner or later he is sent forth into the great world, where he is usually expected to supply his own Wants. Still he may be more needy and more helpless as a graduate than as a babv, unless the training of the Family has SOCIETY. 167 helped him to help himself, has lifted himself into self-reliance and freedom. Accordingly the individual passes from the Family into Society, from having his Wants sat- isfied through an outside power, to satisfying them through himself. This requires exertion, production of some kind, labor; yet such pro- duct does not directly satisfy his Wants, at least not in most cases. He has to bring; it not to father and mother, but to a new provider, the Social Whole, which in return for his effort gives him back what he needs. This Social Whole or Society is now to be inspected inside and outside, and unfolded. The great fact of Society, then, is that it is to mediate human Wants. That is, man is not to satisfy his Wants immediately, is not to seize anything at hand w4iich may sate his appetite or still his desire, like the wild animal. Only to a small and ever diminishing degree can he directly accept the bounty of Nature. More and more, as he advances in civilization, he nmst mediate his Wants through the Social Institution. To be sure, the assertion of the individual Will, stimu- lated by some need, is the starting-point, but it must rise to the universal or institutional Will, which returns to and secures the individual Will. So it comes that man's first Wants are to be social- ized ere they can be gratified, and herein lies the main difference between civilization and barbarism . 168 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Thus the Wants of the individual, as the con- tent of his Will, must be mediated by the Social Whole, which is made up of all Wills working to satisfy Wants. For this Social Whole is to will the gratification of the Wants of all the members composing it, who thereby are socialized or me- diated. Hence I, this social individual, in satis- fying my Wants, have to will at the same time the satisfaction of the Wants of all other mem- bers of the Social Whole. I cannot be absolutely selfish in Society, even when I seek my own gratification. I have to will, perhaps uncon- sciously, the satisfaction of others' Wants in order to satisfy my own. Or if this still be called selfish, it is at least not swinish. Such is the appearance of the Social Institution, which, however, is secular (as distinct from religious), inasmuch as it secures the individual Will stimu- lated by Want. I cannot eat a piece of bread and satisfy my hunger without mediately satisfying the hunger of the baker, the miller, the farmer, in fact with- out involving the total Social Organism. I must feed it with the products of my labor in order to get fed myself; and in feeding it, I am feeding the feeder of all like myself. Thus the Social Institution strips me of my mere individualism and universalizes me even through my bodily greeds, making my animal nature over by a humanizing process. Such at least is the pur- SOCIETY. 169 pose of the Institution, though it can be per- yerted, as we shall see. The social movement, then, in its simplest sweep, is from the man hungry, through the Institution, back to the man satisfied. This movement will draw much else into its maelstrom, still it will remain to the end. Every day the individual body of each living being has to be kept renewing and reproducing itself — this is its fundamental Want. To meet this Want the material must be obtained from the outside, which means effort, exertion. Will; the living body must make itself the implement of its own life ; it must reduce itself to a means in order to be its end; through activity it has to supply fuel just for that acti\dty ; its own effort, producing sus- tenance, produces the condition of its own effort. Thus the individual Will through the physical Body has to return to itseK and reproduce itself by making its activity possible. To that start- ing-point from which it goes forth, it comes back re-creating the same. Now this phj'sical process is objectified in the social process. In like man- ner we have seen that the individual Will has to return to itself through the Social Body and give validity to itself. The physical Body with its Wants finds its counterpart, its other or universal Body in the Social Institution, which truly em- braces everybody as one Body, and which is 170 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. itself a Will actualized, whose function is to make valid the original individual Will. It is a mistake, however, to consider Society simply as an organism whose workings can be expressed in biological terms ; still less can it be considered as a mechanism and be expressed in mechanical terms. Ultimately Society can find the adequate utterance of its principle onh' in psychology, which is able to order it fully and completely, though it has its marked analogies to a mechanism, and still more to an organism, both of which may be drawn into use for helping ihustrate its process. The Social Body (universal) is, then, very dif- ferent from the Human Body (individual) ; in fact, from the highest point of view they are opposites. The Social Body is an Institution not an animal Body ; it is the latter made univer- sal and existent as a Whole in the world, the one Body embracing all Bodies. Society is not gen- erated like the bodily organism through the sexual pair, but is the work of the Self, the Ego, and shows the latter' s process. Its function is not simply to give back assimilated to the one Body that which has been given to it in the way of food, but to give back to each social Individual what he has contributed, and to satisfy thereby the cycle of his Wants. Thus we may conceive it as the universal Body which receives, assimi- lates, and returns sustenance to all its diverse SOCIETY. 171 particular Bodies which furnish its food in the form of labor or the willed Product. Man is by nature as hungry as the all-devour- ing Ocean or as gaping Chaos; he is born into the Social Whole with mouth wide open, and with soul far wider-open. He, the all-needing, needs supremely the Universe ; so he constructs out of his soul (or self) this Universal Body embracing all possible Bodies born and even unborn, and through this he is fed, which must at the same time satisfy all Wants of all men. The individual Body has been declared to have three primary Wants — food, raiment, shelter. The Social Body may be said to have these same Wants, though in a different way. It needs shelter and raiment, it also must be protected against the strokes of Nature; then, too, it needs food, Avhich is human effort, digesting the same in its capacious stomach and distributing what it receives to its individual members in the form of food, raiment, and shelter. The Social Whole is a kind of universal shelter or home, also a vast clothing-store, but chiefly a prodigious stomach. All these analogies are only illustrative helps, and we must remember that the illustration of the thino; is not the thing; itself and is not the actual statement of the thing. The business world may be taken as the Social Whole ; what is the business man doing? He is active in supplying people's Wants through the 172 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. total Social System. The vast mass of mankind is occupied in this pursuit, doing business, gain- ing a livelihood, or making money. Every man can see himself as a link in the social chain; Want impels him to produce for some Want, between these two Wants lies the Social Institu- tion which mediates them. Accv)rdingly we observe the Will putting itself into some product which satisfies Want. Such effort is usually called labor and such product a commodity, w^iich is the original purchase money in the store of Society, and to which some social reformers wish to return, abolishing coined money. Many thousand human beings with their daily Wants and their daily Work, the Products of their Will, form the Social Mill which is grinding every day ; on the one side they are bringing their grist to be ground, and on the other they are taking away the flour for supplying their needs. Externally Society has this mechanical aspect, and the individual working in it can be reduced to a machine; indeed, instead of feeding the machine, he can be fed into the machine and consumed — which negativ e })ha.se of Society is to be looked into hereafter in its proper place. Coming back to the product into which the Will puts itself, we reach the conception of Property, a most important social element. When the individual Will realizes itself in a thing, this becomes its Property, whose oharac- SOCIETY. 178 teristic thus is the reaUty of the Will iti the object ; or we may say, the existence of the Per- son in what is material. The willed product may well be deemed the pivot of the Social Whole. We have alread}^ seen Society spring out of the Family externally ; but there is an internal relation of which we may now speak. Society is in a way the universal Family with humanity as its offspring; it is the universal father and mother who no longer give to their children food immediately but only mediately, through work, whereby these are compelled to win their free- dom. The ideal end of Society's compulsion, which uses human Want as its pitiless goad, is to force man to be free. But there is a negative side, as already hinted, to this ideal striving; Society can become a mighty tyrant, an all-de- vouring stomach, a colossal machine which grinds to death the free-acting spirit. In an industrial crisis the individual has quite no control over his own lot. Society, though its purpose is to ac- tualize freedom, can turn just to the opposite, to a despotic, destructive energy ; it can become the colossal cannibal, veritably the Hesiodic Saturn devouring his own children But Society has the power of overcoming its own negative power ; it is, as we say, progessive, evolutionary, limit-transcending, being made up of limit-transcending Egos, in whose nature it 174 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. must participate. Yet there is always present the other tendency, which is just the matter to be overcome. The danger of the agriculturist is that he drop down to a mere vegetative life, cling- ino- to the soil like a plant, and unfree even in locomotion. The danger of the manufacturer is that he drop down to a mere mechanical life de- termined by the social mill, becoming himself the machine which he ought to control. Yet the social individual can rise out of such limits, is doing so continuously. Such is, in general, the thought of Society as a whole, or the germinal unit out of which it develops. "We shall now proceed to follow this development in sufficient detail to show its main outlines. It will have three chief stages, reveal- ing the process which is and has been at work producing it at present and from the beginning. This process is fundamentally psychological, a product of the Self which turns about and cog- nizes the Self as the inner moving principle in all social development. Accordingly, we may call it the Social Psychosis, whose movement is as follows : — I. Positive Society; this shows Society as it is, organizing itself and reproducing itself continually as an Institution existent in the world, with its process of mediating the producer of the willed Product and the receiver or consumer of the same; this willed Product (or Property) of SOCIETY. 175 tlie individual producer or owuer is shown mov- ing through Society or the Social Whole to the one who uses it, and calling forth a great variet}' of social forms for its mediation, from the most simple to the most complex. II. N'tgative Society; this shows the reverse movement of Society, when it dissolves and breaks up into its constituents, which become antago- nistic to each other. The Social Individual and the Social Whole separate and collide ; the So- cial Whole, after assailing the Social Individual and then being assailed by him in turn, will no longer socialize his willed Product, but will change to a Perverted Societv, which will iinallv reduce social man back to his beginning, to the natural individual at the starting point of his social ascent. III. The Evolution of Society ; this shows the rise of the natural individual to the Social Whole ; it is, therefore, the return out of mere nature to Positive Society and completes the process which we have called the Social Psychosis. It is prac- tically the counterpart and the corrective of the negative revolutionary movement just given, and theoretically it is the refutation of the decadent, pessimistic view of the Social Order. The recent epoch has unfolded Evolution in response to Revolution, and shows the ascent overcoming the descent of man. The response to the shout " Back to Nature," is now heard in 176 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. the cry " For-^ard to the Institution." Yet both the descendinof and the ascendino- move- ments are integral parts of the total social process. Ever}' science in these days must reckon with Evolution, or be one-sided; yet it is equally one-sided to regard Evolution as the whole of the scientific procedure. It is becoming more and more evident to in- vestigators that the pivot on which Social Evolu- toin turns is Propert}'^, or the human Will realized in the thing, which we shall call the willed Product, thus indicating its psj'chical source. In recent years a great activity has been shown in tracing the origin and historic movement of Property, especially as manifested in early socie- ties. The basic fact of Property is social recog- nition, not simply individual possession; that I have this thing is not enough, my ha\Ting it must be recognized by others and defended by some form of a society. Property is not through my- self alone, I must be supplemented by the Social Whole for its right possession. How was man trained to Propert}', to recog- nize it as another's and to maintain the right of the other as really his own? In general the an- swer may be given: by the primitive Community, to which all property at first belonged, and to which the individual himself immediately be- longed, as is the case largely to-day in the Village Community, for example in the Russian mir. SOCIETY. 177 Here, then, fixed Property begins to arise, being made so, not by one, but by all, by the Social Whole. What it assigns to the individual is his own, and recognized as his own (^proprium) by each member, who must not take the food, for instance, which has been assigned to another. Thus all are trained to Property by the Com- munity ; which is accordingly the Property- making social unit over the entire world and through all time. Not the Family is the creative unit of Society, but the primal Community ; the Family we have already called the institutional cell, or the creative source of all Institutions in general. Property, then, is at first communal, not individual nor domestic ; the act of training the race to Property is performed by the social Institution. Undoubtedly the individual can have a possession by mere seizure, but he can have a true ownership only through an institutional confirmation I. Positive Society. Society, then, starts with tne individual who has Wants, which stimulate him to effort, which effort results in a willed Product. Such a Prod- uct is, accordingly. Will realized in an object, is what becomes Property of some sort, which has in it Want, Will, and Thing. The Ego is now the producer, who may consume his own 13 178 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. product directly, but usually it is passed through the Social Whole, and thus is socialized. This Social Whole receives the willed Product, measures and pays the value thereof according to its own standard, and disposes of the same to the consumer. It mediates the two extremes, the producing and the consuming Egos, making the one work for all and the other receive from all, ere their respective wants can be satisfied. Thus it socializes both. The consumer receives from the Social Whole the willed Product of the producer, uses it for his purpose, and thereby satisfies his Wants. Thus between the first Want of the producer and the final satisfaction of the consumer's Want lies the social process. To satisfy my Want, Society makes me satisfy that of another man, or indeed of all men. It is manifest that the willed Product is what is taken up, passed through, and finally assimi- lated by the social process. Metaphorically we may say that it is the food which the Social Body has to digest and transmute into its living mem- bers. This willed Product is in its simplest stage when produced by the one individual Will ; but when many Wills share in its production and each has to be assigned its share out of the one Product, the Social Whole appears, which is to measure out to each Will its own. This is the institu- SOCIETY. 179 tional element of Society which is herein seen giving validity to the Will of man, the producer. Thus we behold a process in the Products, which process has three stages : the single-willed Prod- uct, the many-willed Product, and the all-willed Product. It is to be observed that the unity in all these distinctions is the willed Product ^ indicating the activity of the Will realized in some form of Property. Still further, we shall employ these compound words in order to designate the ad- vancing association of human beings toward uni- versal combination — single-, many-, aZ?- willed. The reader will likewise notice the psychical movement suggested by the foregoing terms : from simplicity, through multiplicity, back to unity. Thus the willed Product becomes quite complex in Society, but it has one fundamental process; it starts from the individual Will (or Will of individuals), is confirmed by the Social Will, and is returned in some form to the indi- vidual Will. Out of these three stages of the willed Prod- uct spring three forms of mediation (or ex- change), which is performed by the Social Whole functioned, as it has to be, by an indi- vidual whom we may call the Middleman. Three mediating individuals, accordingly, we see, three Middlemen, whose province is to mediate the willed Product, who preside over its process from 180 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. production to oonsuiiiptioii, which is ever rising to vaster proportions. Tlie single- willed Product calls forth the mercantile Middleman, the trader or merchant, w^hose medium of exchange rises from mere barter to money. The many -willed Product calls forth the industrial Middleman, with his manufactures and his capital or organ- ized money. The all- willed Product calls forth the universal Middleman, the monopolist, who controls one or several branches of industry, controls transportation to the market, and finally Avields the complete organization of money in the Bourse or money market. Thus the Product of the single Will begins the social movement, and the latter ends in the Prod- uct of the single Will, for Monopoly is also a single- willed Product, and so returns to the unity of the first stage, which unity, however, con- tains the multiplicity, or rather the totality of Wills. Positive Society or the normal Social Order, as it exists to-day in the world, has all three stages above-mentioned, as well as the three corresponding Middlemen, mercantile, industrial, monopolistic. In fact they form now three main co-existent classes of Society, and constitute in themselves a process w^iicli reveals the Psycho- sis — the latter again breaking up into manj'^ subordinate movements. Democracy, with its manyness, must be monocracy also, though not monarchy; democratic Society, with its multitu- SOCIETY. 181 dinous units of Will, must be always passing into monopoly of some kind, which need not be hurt- ful to freedom, though it certainly may become so. Accordingly we shall now look at the Social Whole evolving itself through the willed Product, which development has not merely taken place in the past, but is going on continuously, with all its elements present, both simple and complex. I. The single-willed Product. In the present sphere we are to consider the single Will producing the single Product. Each is a unit; the Will is individual (Ego) and the Product is also individual (Thing). This is in contrast to the many-willed Product, which has in its pro- duction a plurality of Wills. Three men catching fish with hook and line in a free stream have, as a result of their labor, each a single-willed Prod- uct; but the same men catching fish in common with a drag-net, call forth a many -willed Product. But the one Will with its Product is brought into contact and association with another Will and its Product, whereby the primitive social process begins. They exchange their Products, and thus show a common Will in their mutual recognition of each other's Product. As the representative and the realization of this common Will the middleman as trader or merchant ap- pears, who is the mediator between the two single Wills — producer and consumer — he being the third single Will. Such is the general sweep of 182 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. this sphere, which we shall now carry out in a little more detail. 1. The one Will and i(s Product. The earliest and most immediate form of the single-willed Product is seen in the act of seizing, possessing and consuming the external object. Such an act belongs to the living organism, and every animal performs it in one way or other. It is confined to the individual body, which thus manifests im- mediate want and immediate gratification. Yet here we may observe the social cycle implicit, involved in nature, the primal potentiality of Society in the aniraal organism. (1) There is the first exertion of the "Will in seizing the thing, being impelled by desire. This is the crude form and original of labor, which will continue to seize and transform the thingf. Still we must remember that the Will has to ex- ternalize itself in order to be ^Vill ; the Ego can- not be itself unless it divides within and utters itself ; such an utterance takes form in the ex- ternal Thing. (2) This external Thing is pri- marily will-less, a mere physical object. But through seizure it is filled with a Will, it becomes personal (though not a Person); it is Property, the Ego's own, in the first crude stage of mere possession, not yet confirmed by the recognition of others. (3) This external Thing is internal- ized, completing the cycle in gratification, or con- sumption. It thus goes back into the organism, SOCIETY. 183 which was the possibility of the first activity of the Will in seizinor the Things. In such fashion the first exertion, going forth into the willed Product, has returned and produced itself. The individual Will must utter itself in the willed Product, in order to be Will, and rise to Ego, Person. Also the external Thing of Nature finds its true reality and destiny in becoming the willed Product in order to rise to Property. The previous organic cycle of the one Will is the un- born social process whose whole striving and end is to be born, to pass from potentiality to reality. But the object external to this one Will is not only athing, but another Will, a Person. So next we have to consider such duplication of Wills with their interaction. Really in the Thing possessed my Will has become objective ; the next step is to separate and to recognize the objective Will which is distinct from mine and also externalized in the Thing. 2. The tivo WiUfi exchanging Products. Each is the single Will with the single-willed Product. Both are brought together, the two Egos, the two boys, each with his ball ; each covets the other's possession. Thus follows the exchange of willed Products — a very important act in social development. For in such exchange there is the recognition by each of the other's Will in the Thing, whereby we rise to a higher stage of Property. Not only do I now possess my object 184 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. through immediate seizure, through ray own Will, but also through another's Will, since he wills to give me his object for mine. So the violence of Nature has begun to cease, and a social Will has at least put forth a bud. But the two Wills do not come into complete agreement without a process. (1) The immediate exchange of single-willed Products is known as Barter, or " swapping.'' In this act there is an implicit recognition of each by the other ; each unconsciously ac- knowledg-es the other's right to the Thiuo-. Both are producers, both consumers; but each consumes or uses the other's Product. Thus there is an underlying unity of the two Wills, which have formed together a small Society in the simple act of Barter. (2) But the process does not generally complete itself without a strug- gle. The individual Will asserts itself against this unity, against even this little social act of primitive exchange, and seizes the other's object immediately. So we have the negation of Barter, which is Plunder; the consumer will not pro- duce, but takes the willed Product, and thus destroys Will through his Will. The outcome must be that his deed has to be returned to him, his Will to destroy Will must be given back to him, and thus be itself destroyed. Such is the stage of primitive social conflict which ends in putting down the negative Will through some SOCIETY. 185 kind of punishment. (3) The positive result of such conflict is the recognition of one Will b}'^ the other in its Product, which recognition is not the first impKcit recognition of Barter, but is explicit, and is expressed in custom or primitive law. Now we have Property in its third stage, the first being the immediate exertion of the Will in the Product, the second being the implicit recognition of that Will in Barter ; this third stage shows Property consciously recognized, or the willed Product acknowledged by the Will of the other, and perchance directly secured by the latter' s help. The process of the two Wills has started nu- merous social elements into their first early life. Right, Law, a remote hint of the State with its justices lie here imbedded but sprouting. Wealth , Value, reward for Labor may be seen peeping forth ; also a moral training has begun in the suppression of the immediate desire to seize what you want, since the object belongs to another. Especially the Social Whole has evolved out of a purely internal organic process in the one in- dividual into an external movement between two Wills, both of which have recognized their unity and have subordinated themselves to the same, thus acknowledging a power over themselves which is really institutional, since through it both Wills are made free in their activity, indeed are willing each other's Free Will. For when 186 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. the one recognizes the other in the willed Prod- uct, and gives validity to such recognition through exchange, the act is institutional ; the two Wills are becominsf socialized, each throucrh the other, and have begun to act and to live in a third element, the social. Now this third element called for by the two Wills, is next to be represented in a third person or a third Will, which, so to speak, takes its place between the two previous Wills and medi- ates them through their Products. 3. The Third Will as Middleman. In the previous stage the two producers were still sep- arated, perchance were in opposition; the one does not want the other's product in exchange for his own. The consumer and the producer are divided b}'^ space, time, different needs and many other causes ; thus the willed Product is left idle, and exertion finds not its recompense. The result is the appearance of the third person, the middleman, the mediator mediating anew the dualism between producer and consumer. Thus arises the trader by profession, the merchant who will call forth a new class by performing a new function among men. He is the first real embodiment of the coming Social Whole, a vis- ible personification of it, a person now function- ing the Social Institution in its incipient form. But here too it becomes necessary to note with care the process. SOCIETY. 1«7 (1) The first form in which the middleman appears in relation to the two other Wills, w^hich we may call the producer and the consumer, is still that of Barter, or the immediate exchange of Products. The middleman is also a pro- ducer like the two others, one of whom, we may suppose, does not want the Product of the other, and so there is no exchange. But the middleman now steps in and exchanges his Product which is wanted by the first man for one which he him- self does not want for consumption, well know- inof that he can exchange with the second man whose Product he does w^ant for consumption. So through him and his Product all three are satisfied by mutual exchange. But note the dif- ference between this middleman and the two others ; he is the one who has knowledge — knowl- edge of the wants and of what vnW satisfy the wants ; in other words, he knows the supplj^ and the demand, and also what will bring them together. The intelligence of the merchant is his, even in the primitive form of the barterer or "swapper; " or possibly instinct we should call it, the instinct of the trader, which often appears in the small boy. (2) The one willed Product in exchange be- comes many willed Products in exchange ; the middleman makes himself a universal medium of exchange for his neighborhood; he has a store, has capital, has profit. Still it is an cxehniigi; 188 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. of willed Products. But the middlemen also are multiplied as well as their articles of exchange, thus arise competition, division of labor, in gen- eral the market, which includes them all, and shows the diversified trade-world, to which each individual brings what he produces and receives what he needs in return. Thus his Will is made valid not simply through himself but through others, many or perchance all others. But limitations to this exchange of articles have appeared. In the first case the middleman as barterer cannot mediate his two men, if neither of them wants the article of the other. That is, one of them must desire the article of the other, if the middleman is to effect the exchange. Then the middleman may want the article which the producer brings, but may not have the article which the latter wants. Hence the call for a universal article of exchange, and it is forth- comino-. (3) This is money, in which the middleman has, so to speak, become the middle thing, which mediates all things. Money is the willed Product which is exchanged for any willed Product what- ever. Every man possessing money is his own middleman, and commands every willed Product in exchange. It is, therefore, what all men want, being just that want which frees from all want. It is the universal willed Product, all things are convertible into it and it into all things. Money SOCIETY. 189 confers freedom on the one hand, and power on the other, which power can become tyranny. Hence some social reformers have sought to abolish it, but it is an inherent evolution of the Social Whole. In the process of the Three Wills just con- sidered, the middleman in a way has been con- verted into mone3^ His act of mediation is now performed by a willed Product which may be in the hands of every man. Tlie middleman's Will is thus objectified, put into an object. Still the merchant is not lost to the Social Whole, though he be no longer the barterer. He too employs the universal medium of exchange, of himself he converts himself into money. Moreover in money the single-willed Product has completed its movement. At the start the single-willed Product was purely individual, but now it has become universal through the social process which has just been set forth. Money is a kind of pawn, and the Social Whole a kind of pawn-broker's shop, to which the j^awn is brought and exchanged. Properly money is the middle- man's Product as sino;le- willed, which single- willed Product must possess his peculiar power of exchano;e, as against all other si no;le- willed Prod- ucts. Or we may say, somewhat awkwardly perhaps, that the particular single-willed Product (some article), must be transformed into the universal single-willed Product (money), which 190 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. in its turn is transformed back into a particular single-willed Product (another article). It will thus be seen that the single-willed Product in itself goes through the social process by means of money, is socialized, and therein completes its c^^cle. Every piece of money that we handle has in it just this complete social process, and this is what makes it money. The individual, receiving a coin for his service and passing it for another service, is making it live its life. The movement is the single-willed Product, first as particular, then as universal, then back to the particular. Thus the single-willed Product has unfolded the mercantile Person (merchant) and the mercantile Thing (money) ; one is subject, the other is ob- ject, one internal, the other external. But both exist for social mediation ; each has this social process and is a medium of exchange. Thus the social Wliole in the present sphere has its own inner and outer mediator, its own middle-man and middle-thino^ for functioninoj itself. In the history of Political Economy the Mer- cantilists (Colbert) thought that money as such was the source of wealth. The Physiocrats held that land was the source of wealth (Quesnay). Adam Smith in general took labor (the willed Product) to be the source of wealth, hence he was the prophet of modern productive industry. The single-willed Product, when the dominant social fact, has its home specially in the Village SOCIETY. 11>1 Community, which has for the most part three chisses of producers — users of the soil (agricul- turists and shepherds), artisans, and tradesmen. This simple village life will persist underneath the more complex social forms hereafter unfolded . The middleman adds to the single-willed Prod- uct a new Will, namely his own, which gives an increased value to the article which has passed through his hands. Thus we have really a double- willed Product, or perchance a many-willed Prod- uct — wherewith we have passed to a new branch of our subject. II. The Many- Willed Product. — Many Wills now enter into one Product, each contrib- uting its effort. In case of the single-willed Product just considered, one Will entered into one Product, or, possibly, into many separate Products. Previously multiplicity might lie in the things produced ; now it lies in the Wills producing, while the Product is one. Thus we reach the sphere of separation in the willed Product, this separation being through the causa- tive energy, the Will. The present fact will be found to introduce very important elements into the Social Whole. As the latter is actualized Will whose function is to make valid the individual Will, giving to the same the just reward of effort, it comes upon new con- ditions and new difficulties in the present sphere. For instance, how is Society to ascertain the just 192 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. share of the laborer in a vast complicated Prod- uct, not only of many Wills, but of many kinds of Wills? Here distinctively the social question comes up, and the social conflict between labor and capital, as it is popularly called. Thus the many-willed Product will have its distinct place and process in the development of the Social Order. Indeed the many- willed Product is specially the social Product, being the combined work of many associated Wills. The single-w^illed Prod- uct is individual and remains so throuohout its process, though the Wills associate externally and exchange their individual Products. But now the association is not in the exchansre but in the production itself of the object; thus each Will becomes intertwined and comminoled with other Wills, all being bound fast, and as it were imprisoned in their common Product. Here, then, will arise supremely the realm of conflict between these Wills — the conflict over their respective shares. We saw the commercial middleman evolved out of the socializing process of the single-willed Product. But when the middleman has taken the single-willed Product, and therein added his Will or effort, it is no longer snigle-willed, for two or more Wills have entered into its present status. Thus we pass to the many-willed Prod- uct. But this too is subjected to a socializing SOCIETY. 193 process, and will evolve a new middleman, namely, the industrial one, who is the culmina- tion and conclusion of the many -willed Product. This process, going through its psychical move- ment (for it is Will, Ego) is what we are now to consider. The first and most immediate stage of the many-willed Product is that it is all of one kind essentially, hence divisible and measurable quan- titatively according to the participating Wills. This we shall call the homogeneous many-willed Product. But soon we shall find entering such a Product qualitative differences, not mathemati- cally measurable, such as skill and other qualities of the workman, and finally capital in some form. Thus arises the heterogeneous many -willed Product, out of which is born the grand struggle between labor and capital. Finally this struggle will be harmonized, at least for a time, by the new mid- dleman who is called forth by it, and w^e shall see the heterogeneous many-willed Product me- diated, whose mediator is just the middleman already mentioned. Such is the process of what we here call the many-willed Product, inasmuch as we seek to carry it back always to its psychical fountain- head in the Ego as Will. 1. The homogeneous many -willed Product. This is the simple form of the many-wulled Prod- uct, in which several Wills co-operate in pro- is 1'j4 social institutions. clucing some result or object. Now these Wills are supposed to be homogeneous, all of a kind, and to labor equally. What they produce will be also homogeneous, capable of a simple quanti- tative measurement and division. Let three men fish in a free stream with a seine which has been given them. The product of their effort can be divided into three shares, .each man taking a share. Not only the Wills of the different men are homogeneous, but the labor is so too, there being no difference in skill. Here, then, labor, even of a many-willed Product gets its own with mathematic exactness, and we see the primal state of social simplicity, which will remain the laborer's ideal. The socialist will seek to get back to this social Paradise in which the workman is to receive the measure equivalent of his effort. The bounty of Nature (the free stream for fishing) and the seine (the means of production) are to be restored to him if the}^ are ever taken away. The many-willed Product is thus homogeneous and measurable. Accordingly the simple Product of many Wills shows the following stages: (1) The common labor of all, the co-operation of homogeneous Wills produces it, and gives to it its essential character. (2) Hence comes its divisibility ac- cording to the number of Wills concerned in pro- duction, each Will getting its share in proportion to its effort. (3) Each Will gets its share SOCIETY. r.»5 through all, through the Social Whole, whose act is this division and assignment of shares. Society in its simplicity secures this quantitati\'e division of [)roducts, the laborers being all ccju^d as to Will, and measured by a common standard. Now the result is that the Product assigned is a realized possession of each Will, being so ac- knowledged by all three persons co-operating. So labor ends in Property just by the preceding process, which tirst shows the common effort, then the division by which the common Product is individualized, tinally the recognition of each j)()rtion by all. The Will, living and active before, is now realized, inactive, dead in the thing; in this Condition, it is taken up by anew Will (say the dealer or merchant), who gives his effort to the Product, and revivifies it, thereby making it the Product of different kinds of Wills, the living and the dead, or the active and inactive Wills. 2. The heterogeneous many-willed Product. The Product now takes character from the two kinds of Wills producing it and becomes hetero- geneous. Thus the great twofold separative prin- ciple enters production and calls forth the chief conflicts of the Social System. The numy-willed Product is no longer homogeneous, simply quan- titative in its difference, but a far deeper, a quali- tative difference has been projected into the object l)y the two Wills, the producing and the produced, 196 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. the active and the passive, the personal and the impersonal (as thing), the present and the past AAlll. In other words Labor and Capital, quies- cent and implicit in the homogeneous Product, now become explicit. We have already noted in the preceding process how personal effort realizing itself becomes an impersonal possession or Property, how Labor through its own inherent nature goes over into a Product which becomes Capital, which is, so to speak, the dead hand in most living opera- tions of the business world. But the homo- geneous Product in the instance before cited is usually heterogeneous. The owner of the seine (in the foregoing illustration) is likely to be the fourth partner, the inactive one, along with the three fishermen, the active part- ners, who must also assign to him his share. But how great a share? "What common standard can be found for measurins^ the active and the inactive Will? And further, the stream or the fish-pond may be the property of still another person, who also becomes an inactive partner, as the owner of the original product of Nature. Thus difference enters on both sides : difference in Capital, which may be the transformed imple- ment (the seine) or the transformed bounty of Nature (the stream) ; difference also in the active Wills as to skill and strength. So on the one side Capital separates into Rent for the natural SOCIETY. 197 product, and Interest on the value of the trans- formed product, which is here the tool; on the other side Labor calls forth a difference in re- ward, such as Wages and Profits. Thus the het- erogeneous Product, having division in its very being, reproduces this division indefinitely ; the fundamental one, however, is the division into Labor and Capital, the living and the dead hand, the personal and the impersonal factor in pro- duction. Still the two are but sides of one whole, stages of one complete process. Capital gives to Labor its opportunity, its implement, being itself an implement ; on the other hand Labor gives to Capital its life, revivifies its dead or passive Will, and makes the same produce again. Without Capital Labor Avould have to begin over again from the very start, it would have to make its seine before it could catch the fish. Yet it nmst have fish or other food (which is Capital) before it can even make the seine. Unless the individual Will could realize itself in Property or Capital, and thus have the beginning for a new activity, the human being would have to consume immediately what he produces, and so would never rise beyond the stage of Nature, or of tlie single-willed Product in its crudest form. Man would have to seize the nut or berry, and devour it in order to get tiie pliysi<-al })ower to seize an- other nut or berry. Pmt in the developed Social 198 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Whole, the thing must be given before it can be produced, man must eat his dinner before he can earn his dinner, so much bread the plowman must have before he can sow the wheat for his loaf. All this is merely saying that he must have Capital in order to labor. Thus the process of Labor is to unfold into its own presupposition ; that which it produces becomes that which pro- duces it, and so we behold it in its process. This heterogeneous element in production is what socialism seeks to eliminate. The dead hand — Capital — is somehow to be lopped off, as well as its exploiter, the middleman. Let every individual have only the living hand of labor, but no property of his own. From the Social Whole he is to receive his share measured out accordintj to the quantity of his labor, which is or is to be made homogeneous. The scheme of socialism is, therefore, to reduce the heterogeneous many- w^illed Product into a homogeneous one, by level- ing down all distinctions of Will to one kind, thus making such Product easily divisible and distributable. Hence the oft-noticed tendency of socialism is to obliterate all special skill or superiority or the desire for excellence, as this disturbs the homogeneity of labor, or, as the socialists say, the equality of man. The great transition from artisanship to indus- trialism, or from individual production to soci:d, lies in the social movement from the sinffle-wiHcd SOCIETY. iJ)y Product to the many-willed heterogeneous Prod- uct. Almost any utensil before us may be both, a bucket, for instance, or even a watch. This last stage, also, will have its process. (1) There is first the immediate unity of the two kinds of Will when the laborer and the capi- talist are one and the same person, as is often the case. The farmer who cultivates his own acres, and uses his own implements has in an undivided lump wages and rent and also interest; so has the small mechanic who owns his shop in the ; village. The product is, however, heterogeneous, yet implicitly so; it has in itself the different kinds of Wills, though not divided and sepa- rately demanding tribute. This is the independ- i ent workman, as near as he can be, in the Social \ Whole. Such is usually deemed to be his hap- piest condition. But let him once rent a piece of land or borrow some money for improvements ; he finds that he has to pay wages to a dead hand, which indeed co-operates with him if he energizes it, but which demands its toll with unfailino^ reo;ularitv. When the product of his effort comes in, it divides, : one part staying with him and the other part I leaving him forever in the form of rent or inter- est or both. Here then we must consider a new / phase of the process. (2) This is manifestly the separative stage of the heterogeneous Product, the main line of cleav- 200 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. age being the two different kinds of Wills which have entered into its composition. Labor and Capital have openly separated, their division has become explicit, real ; even though they co-oper- ate in bringing forth the Product, they at once tear it asunder, each taking a share and going away wath it. Labor is active, the producing Will; Capital is stored up, the produced Will; the latter is vitalized by the former ; the former is endowed with twofold or perchance tenfold power by the latter. Which is the more impor- tant of the two? What share of the Product ought each to have? A question not easy to set- tle especially when left to the parties interested. Inevitably there will be conflict. One fact seems pretty w^ell established : with the advance of Society the value of the dead Will continually diminishes, as shown by the decreas- ing rate of interest, w^hile the value of the living Will (the worth of man) is continually rising, as shown by the general increase of wages amid all fluctuations. Yet Labor is of various kinds, hence the difference must enter it, too. (3) Labor, accordingly, separates itself also into two main sorts, yet just through this separa- tion it is joined in a new union with Capital. Going to a farm we find two men at work in the field, performing the same kind of labor; one is " the hired hand," the other is the owner of the land and of the implements of husbandry : the one SOCIETY. 201 is purely laborer, the other is laborer and capital- ist, who thus unites in himself the extremes. Labor and Capital. A new kind of division of the Product results, the division into Wages and Profits, the latter being some combination of Wages, Rent and Interest. Such is the diiference between the two laborers. Yet we must notice that this laboring employer of Labor, by virtue of his double position, is a mediator between Labor and Capital, which other- wise could hardly come together in the present instance. So Labor and Capital, previously united iumiediately in one man, are now also mediately united through him, and the separation for the time beino; is harmonized. The living- "hired hand" clasps through him the "dead hand," and both are made to co-operate in pro- duction with little or no jar usuall3^ Thus the heterogeneous many-willed Product has taken its first and easiest course, its two dif- ferent Wills being mediated by a third Will which shares in both, which is both laborer and capitalist. Evidently such a person is a most important development, bearing in himself tlic two opposing principles, Labor and Capital, and also their reconciliation. So important is such a person that he cannot stop in his development ; he must hear the call to mediate not one or two, but many laborers, Avith Capital, which also comes to him and begs for employment. 202 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. But with such an evolution he is changed in character, he can no longer be a " hand " with other *' hands," he has to drop the physical side of Labor, and thus sever his direct bond of con- nection with the laborer. All his time and effort are taken up with his special gift, which has shown itself to lie in his mediatorial function be- tween Labor and Capital. He is no longer the laborer, but the employer of Labor; no longer the capitalist (or he need not be), but the man- ager of Capital ; then both Labor and Capital he directs to their common end, to the exploitation of great enterprises. This is the new man who has been evolved by Societ3% and vvdio must next be looked at in his place. 3. The heterogeneous many-ivilled Product mediated. This mediation is accomplished by the new middleman, whom we shall call the in- dustrial middleman, though he has a variety of names corresponding to his varied relations. The Product has in it a society of Wills which have to be organized and socialized in order to make that Product; raw material, food and machinery must be furnished them, all of Avhich is the part of Capital; then the Product must be sold in the market. What is the power first concentrating in itself and then directing these three elements which are often recalcitrant? This is the indus- trial middlenum, who has to have his hand on three markets at the same time — the labor- BOCIETY. 203 market, the money-market (Bank or Capital), and the product-market. It is manifest that his situation has in it many possibilities of conflict; these united elements are sure to fall asunder and to assail one another and him also. Already we have seen the many-willed Product calling up the struggle between Labor and Cap- ital, two of the preceding elements. But these two opposing forms of Will have now been medi- ated by a new Will distinct from both, yet controlling both. Here rises to view the great administrator, the organizer of mighty under- takings which require vast Labor and Capital working in conjunction. Directive power he must have in a supreme degree, uniting the two most colossal yet antagonistic agencies of Society, and driving them like a span of refractory horses to the goal of his enterprise. At his highest he is the generalissimo of the modern industrial army, the man of brain who obtains enormous rewards for his service. In lower grades he is the contractor, the entrepreneur, the " boss," whose training-time is usually the period when he labored with his laborers, yet hired them, too, on his own account. Thus he rises from the ranks on one side, yet he is a capitalist on the other, both elements being united in him innnediately. His next step is he frees him- self from both, turning and commaiuling bolli. Tims lie stands forth a most impoi'tant ligurc 204 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. in the modern movement of the Social Whole. It was said that he is the mediator between Labor and Capital, and he is; still, the old con- flict is bound to break out under his regime in a new and even more intense form. This industrial middleman, rising out of Labor and knowing it in all its limitations, will be sure to take advan- tage of his knowledge. In fact just that is the reason why he is able to rise ; he possesses talent, brain-power, administrative ability, which is wanting to the rank and file of the vast army of laborers, who feel the separation and possibh^ the wrong, and open the new conflict. Really, this is a struggle between Brain and Brawn, very old indeed (see Sophocles' Ajax and Shakespeare's TroUus and Cressida), in which conflict Brawn is pretty sure to be worsted, and if it be not worsted, it is worse off than if worsted. So the industrial middleman will assert himself, as he is just the mediating principle without which labor is laborless and money is moneyless. Still in this process of mediating the Product, both sides will learn a good deal, they must come to a new consciousness of their position in the Social Whole. The process of the mediated Product of many Wills — the laborer on the one side, the capitalist on the other, and between them the industrial SOCIETY. 205 ' middleman — we may now glance at it in its sep- arate stages. (1) At first the many Wills work together in harmony for production. The vast organism of a manufacturing establishment has its mass of laborers, its directive Will, and its Capital. All three kinds of Wills are united in the effort of transformino^ a given material into the Product which we have called mediated, since its com- manding factor is the industrial middleman, whose Will has joined, vitalized and directed the two extremes. Labor and Capital, at the same time looking out for the market of the Product. But Capital retires more and more into the back- ground, in fact, it becomes less and less valuable (judged by the diminishing rate of interest), while the industrial middleman becomes more and more valuable (judged by the increasing rate of profits). What he can take from wages is his, so there begins the struggle between the two living Wills, the wage-laborer and the industrial nr* dleman. (2) This is the strongest, deepest, most abid- ing conflict of the present stage of industrial Society, which may be stated as the struggle be- tween the wage-laborer and the industrial middle- man, the one of whom has muscle chiefly though directed with more or less acquired skill, the other of whom must have brain, the original and originating power, though this is given in differ- 20(". SOCIAL INSTirUTIONS. cut degrees. So we Avitue:?s a tendency in Society to reduce the wage-laborer to the bare necessities of existence, to what will enable liini to repro- duce his da^^'s toil for his taskmaster. This fact has been enforced with great energy by Marx and his school, though in a one-sided way, and, in our opinion, with one-sided deductions. The result is an ernornious accumulation of Wealth accompanied by hopeless Poverty, an ever-increasino" luxury alonsfside of social misery. Thus arises somethings more than a struo^o-le for supremacy, it is a struggle for life or rather for an improvement in life which deepens into a struggle over Society itself. Such is the de- structive dualism which the social process has evolved out of itself, but Avhose further develop- ment belongs in a different connection. The matter now to be noted is that each side has been in a training-school, and that both through conflict have learned something about each and all. ( 3 ) The total Social Order gets involved in the conflict between the wage-earner and the indus- trial middleman, and each side comes to recognize the fact. Thereb}^ it has found out its place and function in the Social Order. This mutual recog- nition takes place between Labor and Capital, or between the laboring multitude and their media- tor, both of whom must recognize themselves as belonging to the Social Whole. We have already SOCIETY. 207 seen that Property could attain its validity and perform its function only through the mutual recognition of the possessor and the purchaser; so now Society itself can attain its purpose and perform its function only through the mutual recognition of the two different Wills, Labor and Capital, including their mediator who is specially, to represent and recognize the Social Whole, which thereby enters every Product. But this Product is clearly a new one, or at least is to be seen from a new point of view; it is not the many- willed Product, but the all- willed Product, with which fact we have made a tran- sition out of the present into a new sphere. Looking back a moment we find that the Social W^hole thus far has turned on the willed Product, the object into which man puts his Will. The single-willed Product has evolved the mercantile middleman, who mediates producer and con- sumer of such Products at first, and, finally, of all Products. The many-willed Product has evolved the industrial middleman, Avho mediates Labor and Capital and directs them to the pro- duction of the many-willed Product which is no longer simply homogeneous, but heterogeneous, and then mediated. Moreover, classes of Society have appeared corresponding to these elements. The single- willed Product calls forth the agriculturist, the artisan, the tradesman or merchant ; the many- 208 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. willed Product in addition creates an industrial class, which involves production of raw material (mining, etc.), the transformation of such mate- rial ( manufacturing ) , and the transportation of matter (railroad), and the transmission of thought (telegraph, etc.). Through these co-operating social instrument- alities, production becomes not merely single- willed or many-willed, but all-willed, every Product beino; linked into the total social chain more or less directly. The Social Individual frees himself from Nature's necessity through the Social Whole. We have already traced how man produces and reproduces this Social Whole by his activity' ; how his productive genius keeps transforming it by new inventions which wrest fresh spheres of control from Nature ; how not merely his physi- cal Wants, but his deepest Want, namely, his spiritual need of transcending limits, is here sat- isfied. Thus the aspiration for freedom, the mightiest and most enduring in the human heart, finds its realization in one direction by means of the Social Whole. Man himself is primarily a natural product which has to be socialized ere he can be free, that is, institutionally free. His physical Wants are in one sense animal Wants, yet they have in them the ideal propelling end, which drives him to con- struct an institution for their gratification. SOCIETY. 209 Hence he makes an all-willed Product, truly the universal Product, made for all and by all, so that even through the most individual element in man, namely, his needs and wishes, he is brought to live an universal life, and to will the Free-Will of all. Such is the side of freedom in the Social Whole. That there is another side, a deeply negative one, to this social movement need only be here indicated, as it will be specially developed later. Man, though freed from the external might of Nature through the Social Whole, may find a new tyrant enslaving him just in this Social Whole. The great object of the modern institu- tional World, especially of the modern State, is to compel Society to perform its true function, which is to secure within its sphere of action the freedom of the Social Individual. Let us trace the career of the middleman in the preceding movement, ere he passes into the following stage where he is to be a lead- ing character. At first he is laborer, owner (capitalist) and middleman for himself — all in one (the village artisan or small farmer who does his own work). Then he is laborer and owner, and also middleman for another, his hired man ; thus the middleman has become partially explicit. Thirdly, he becomes middleman com- pletely, mediating Labor on one side. Capital on the other, and also marketing their P-roduct. 14 210 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. But this heterogeneous many-willed Product, though now mediated, has fermenting within it the most powerful explosive elements of the mod- ern world. Production with its concentration, division of labor, and finally with its machinery, gorges the market beyond all power of consump- tion; the middlemen fall into furious competi- tion with one another, which is accompanied by all sorts of economic throat-cutting, and throws the entire Social Body into convulsions. Thus it is found that Production involves all Society, is at bottom an all-willed act. III. The All-Willed Product. — We are now to unfold fully the fact that what the producer makes is not simply a one-willed Prod- uct, though it be this, too; not simply a many- willed Product, though it be this, too; but, ulti- mately, an all- willed Product. The universal Product and the Product in its universality we are called on to consider, and also their interaction ; that is, we must now take into view the Social Individual, the Social Whole, and their process with its mediation. At the start, man is an all-willed Product, and thereby becomes a member of the Social Order, a Social Individual, He finds that all he gets he has to get through the Social Whole, though at first he be quite unconscious of the fact. So we may say the Social Whole produces him, deter- mines him, though in doing so it has a struggle SOCIETY. 211 with another determinant, namely, Nature. On the other hand, man produces, or, rather, repro- duces the Social Whole ; he must determine his determinant, reproduce through his own activity his reproducer. His Wants invoke the Social Whole for satisfaction, his activity must aid in preserving and re-creating that Social Whole. Finally, as the Social Individual and the Social Whole engender or inherit a conflict, there rises a mediating third principle, which we shall like- wise have to consider an all-willed Product. Thus we witness in the present sphere three all-willed Products, or three forms which have this common characteristic, though in other re- spects they be quite different. They are the subjective all-willed Product, the social Indi- vidual; the objective all-willed Product, the Social Whole; and the third all-willed Product, the new middleman. The first unfolds through the second into the third ; then all three are in a process with each other. The aim of the total movement is toward free- dom, toward the liberation of man from the domination of Nature pure and simple. As a mere physical being he is subject to an outer world ruling him through his Wants ; that outer world he must transform, converting it into an implement of freedom, whereby, it becomes a social world, through which his Wants are satis- fied. Yet this social world can become tyrannical 212 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. also, as we shall see in the course of the following development. The industrial middleman of the last stage is now seen vanishing into the social or all- willed middleman, who is, however, one-willed also, having one-man power ; monocratic we may call him. He has been generated by the Social Whole in order to mediate the conflicts which have sprung up in the domain and under the rule of the industrial middleman, who is now reduced to the ranks of the wage-earners, though usually he is given a high salary as manager or repre- sentative of the new universal middleman (mo- nocratic), either in the name of an individual or a company or both. Thus the simple Product of the laborer or workman is becoming organi- cally all- willed, being now taken into and manipu- lated by the organized Social Whole, or a large part thereof. Such is the new phenomenal birth of the time, the monopolist with his trust or combination, advancing well toward the complete socialization of all Industry, with a still vaster outlook into the future. The following development will be considered in its three stages: first, the all-willed Product as Social Individual; second, the all-willed Prod- uct as Social Whole ; third, the all-willed Product as Social Middleman. The latter is himself a Product, and all-willed, yet mediating the all- willed Product of labor, or showing that such is SOCIETY. 213 the end toward which social evolution is moving. 1. The all-willed Product as Social Individ- ual. That is, the human being is to be recog- nized as an all-willed Product, he is not merely the child of his parents, but of his age, nation, race, of civilization ; it is the Social Order which produces him in everything except his animality. Man is to be first regarded as a Product of the Social Whole immediately and unconsciously; he is born into Society which at once determines him, bringing to him through the parent what may be needful for him physically as well as mentally or morally. The infantile state of de- pendence lasts longer than that of any other ani- mal; its wants cannot be supplied from Nature directly, but mediately through Society, which gives to the child his education, confirms his property, and renders possible his future career. We may set down some of these matters in order. (1) His Wants are, in part at least, deter- mined by the Social Whole, or transformed by it; he has many Wants which no animal has, and what he has in common with the animal are changed. Artificial Wants are those made by Society or transformed from Nature, they begin with the baby's dress, and continue through life. (2) His Will (effort, activity) is primarily determined by the Social AVhole, or is directed by it. As a child he is trained to work, which 214 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. means that he must perform a task given by the Social Whole, though this task be assigned first by the parent. In the kindergarden already, the child through play is made to earn what he re- ceives even in the way of food, and it is the Social Order which gives him the kindergarden and other means of education. (3) His recompense for activity comes through the Social Whole, which furnishes him with food, raiment, and shelter, and possibly much more. Thus it is a kind of Home to him or sec- ond mother, who gives him what he needs, but always requires of him his task, his labor. Thus we may see the Social Whole always at work, quite secretly perhaps, in determining and moulding the individual from his birth. From this point of view man is the all-willed Product ; it is the Social Whole which is forming him, the Social Whole being practically the Will of all. In fact this is what has from the beginning so- cialized the individual, who is otherwise a mere natural Product, which it is the function of Society to transform. The present is, then, the stage of the deter- mination of the Social Individual ; even the but- ton on his coat is made for him by many hands co-operating in the Social Whole. But he in his turn must be one of these co-operating factors ; what has determined him he now determines ; he separates from himself and projects out of him- SOCIETY. 216 self just that Social Whole which came to him from the outside. 2. The all-willed Product as the Social Whole. — This is manifestly the separative or externalizing act of the Ego, and hence is the second stage of the present process. The Social Individual (or Ego) divides from himself that which has produced him socially, and objectifies the same in the Social Institution ; through his labor he is perpetually reproducing this Institu- tion as an existent object, which is an all-willed Product, since every Social Individual takes part in reproducing it. All labor, therefore, has in it an institutional element, and, as the effort of the individual Will, is truly ethical. Such is the fortress which the Social Individual builds to protect himself against the might of external Nature. Truly it is a kind of universal shelter, or home, which, however, must be in- cessantly renewed. Not only a home, but also a body it is ; and still more than a body we must deem it, namely, an Institution. Many close analogies to the human organism Society shows, but the main distinctive point is left out if it be treated in a purely biological way. Similarity there is between tlie Human Body and tlie Social Body, but also a decided contrast. (1) The Social Individual is to furnish to the Social Whole what primarily sustains it, namely his Labor, which is of course his effort, his Will. 216 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Labor is the universal food of the Social Body. The Products of every individual Will have to pass through it in order to be socialized, and it is itself the Product of all these Wills — just that Product whose function is to give back to each AYill its own and in the form which it desires. Wherein we recognize again the thought of Will actualized, or the Institution. Illustrating this thought by analogy we can say that the laborer (or the Social Individual) has to satisfy not merely his own single Body but the universal Body, which must be active before his individual Wants can be satisfied. So not merely his own Body but the universal Body, having Want, must have food; the action is reciprocal, each is satisfied through the other. Each is a Product, yea, an all-willed Product, though in quite opposite ways. The Social Individual is an all-willed Product through the Social Institution ; the Social Institution is an all-wiUed Product through the Social Individual, though he pro- duces at first a single-willed Product. For all individual workers who make such Products must likewise be mediated by the Social Whole. When it comes to the many-willed Product, at once a new process begins. When many Wills (or Persons) are united in producing the separate parts of the article which is to be produced, the power of production is increased greatly, which power is still further increased by incoming ma- SOCIETY. 217 chineiy. This vast increment of production will place new duties upon the industrial middleman who has to market all these commodities ; from this fact will arise a new. movement in the ranks of the middlemen themselves, whereof something will be unfolded later in its proper place. Just now, however, we wish to set forth, first, that all are to give their individual labor to the Social Whole, and be mediated socially by it, thus making it an all-willed Product; secondly, that all are to give their associated labor to the Social Whole, and be mediated socially by it, thus makino; it an all-willed Product. Individual labor brings forth the object which we have called single-willed ; but associated labor of many AYills in the object produced is what we are next to consider, as it introduces a new division in addition to the former division into Labor and Capital. (2) This is the division of Labor. The Social Individual specializes himself in production, he creates new demands or new Wants by his in- ventions which are in some form a fresh conquest of Nature, and hence a further liberation. The invention, for instance, of the reaping-machine, was an overcoming of a great physical resistance, and thereby created a new Want, which, however, set aside or superannuated many former Wants connected with harvesting. That is, the farmer now needs a reaping-machine, but needs no longer 218 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. a sickle or a raker and binder, or a small army of harvesters, in order to put up his crop. Note the significant fact that in language the words reaper, rakei\ hinder, pass from the man to the machine. The specialization of Labor is inherent in the Ego as Will, whose psychical process is to divide within itself and then transcend its division. Hence Labor becomes more effective in quantity and quality in proportion as it specializes itself. Finally, the Social Individual produces the ma- chine to take his place and do his work; he turns the powers of Nature against Nature, and subjects her to himself, he thereby getting the mastery. Thus the Social Individual puts the division of Labor into the Social Whole (of which it be- comes an important element), by means of the heterogeneous many-willed Product, which is next to be willed not simply by many but by all. That is, the Social Whole is an all-willed Product now through the associated labor of all in the manufactured Product, which thereby becomes the image or rather the embodied form of the Social Whole, the latter being also a Product of the division of labor, willing and enforcing the same through its mediation. With this last word appears a new factor, namely the middleman who performs the medi- ating act of the Social Whole, of which he is, therefore, an integral clement. Alreadv we have 80CJETT. 219 seen him generated in the process of the many- willed Product as the industrial middleman, in which he was the mediating principle between Labor, Capital, and Market. The Social Whole must, therefore, include him in the movement of itself as an all-willed Product. Moreover he is the one who harmonizes the inherent division and conflict which lie naturally in the division of Labor, employing it for increased production and giving to it its purpose in the development of the Social Whole, as well as looking out for the increased distribution of the increased production. (3) Accordingly the all- willed Product as the Social Whole has in itself the mediation of the foregoing division of Labor in production, the mediation of the Wills co-operating in the manu- factured Product or any other kind of Product, which mediation is the work or the Product of the industrial middleman, who functions herein the Social Whole. Now this mediating Will (of the middleman) also produces, its Product being just this mediation of the single-willed and many- willed Products before mentioned, making them over into all- willed or truly social Products. In such fashion the many-v\41led heterogeneous Product, made by a number of associated Wills with division of Labor, is elevated into an all- willed Product through the Social Whole repre- sented and functioned by the industrial middleman. Thus it is socialized, becoming all-willed throiiuli 220 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Society which is itself an all- willed Product whose end is to make the single-willed and the many- willed Product all- willed. Each individual Will in its tiniest productive effort is thus confirmed by the Social Will, and mediated through it by its mediating Will, namely the middleman. The latter, in developing a market for increased pro- duction, must rely on increased consumption. The Social Individual has a tendency to univer- salize himself in consumption, whereas he espe- cializes himself in production. He meets the new supply with the new demand, for the new supply furnishes him with some fresh power over Nature. Hence his desire for freedom leads him to look after the new device or invention, at least that is the spirit in countries which are new and free. Enormous productivity in inventions results from the ready consumption of those articles which are a genuine advance towards freedom. It should never be forgotten, however, that as we become more independent of Nature through ma- chinery, we are becoming more dependent on the Social Whole, so that there is still dependence. Less and less is the tendency for individual man to produce what he consumes, as this is al- ways increasing in variety and complexity. In fact, the circle of his production is becoming narrower, while the circle of his consumption is widening, whereby his dependence on the Social Whole is more complete. Thus the Social In- SOCIETY. 221 dividual is halved by the Social Whole into two opposite tendencies : more special in his work or vocation, more universal in his wants and their satisfaction. Both sides, however divergent, are united by the Social Whole through its middleman. Such is the movement toward the absolute socialization of man, in which we may well see the development into a completer freedom. Really it is the social unfolding of the individual which brings about the division of Labor, whose end is always something better, i. e., perfection. The Ego confines its work to the one narrow field and perfects it in excellence and rapidity of pro- duction, and perchance in other ways. To be sure there is a drawback to this narrowing life, which the Social Whole must seek to remedy. The primitive man produces what he needs, and consumes what he produces, for the most part ; thus he is a self-sufficient being in contrast to the Social Individual, since he bears in him- self quite the total process of the Social Whole. But his destiny is to throw this out of himself, to make it objective, whereby it becomes Will actualized, an Institution, which is the comple- tion and fulfillment of his selfhood. Recapitulating the movement under the head of The all-willed Product as tJie Social IVIiole, we can conceive it summarily as follows. First, the individual labor of all (which is their Will) producing the single-willed Product, calls forth 222 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. the Social "Whole to mediate the same. Second, the collective or social labor of all ( which is their Will) producing the many-willed Product calls forth the Social Whole to mediate the same. Third, this Social Whole, mediating the labor of all calls forth the individual mediator, the middleman, who is to function the Social Whole as the all-willed Product which has to make valid socially all products of all Wills. Such is the result : the Social Whole is an all- willed Product as well as the Social Individual, with whom we started. But at the same time another result has appeared : it is the middleman who is a Social Individual, yet whose function is to perform the function of the Social Whole. Thus he has both elements in him ; he is an all- willed Product from both directions, being medi- ated by the Social Whole which he mediates through and for all. Still he is a single Will. He too must have his process, which springs from his double, or indeed triple character. This we shall consider next. 3. The aJl-wlUed Product as Social Middle- man. So we shall name him at present, since he is the truly social, that is, universal middle- man, and since ideally he is to mediate all society and free it from inner conflict. That such a state of thinojs is not vet realized is, of course, maui- fest, but the tendency to its realization is every- where evident in the social movements of to-dav. SOCIETY. 22,^ Here we shall employ another word which seems needful, and which has already been sua- gested — the word monocratic, which in our usage means one-willed, yet through all Wills. It is one-man power, yet mediated by all men. The United States Government is a monocracy, a one-willed Institution, yet likewise an all-willed Institution, a democracy, and each works through and is mediated by the other. A monocracy is different from a monarchy or an autocrac}^ which has no such mediation through all, or has it im- perfectly. Monocracy and Democracy go to- gether and cannot be separated without despot- ism on one side or chaos on the other. Each must finally be through the other. Society, or the Industrial Order, is going and must go the same way as the State. It will have its monocratic middleman and is now generating him, at the same time it must make him perform his duty to all. He is essentially one-willed yet he is through and for all Wills, and hence he is called likewise an all-willed Product. We have just seen the unfolding of two social elements, the Social Individual and the Social Whole as all-willed Products. Moreover, we have likewise seen the Social Whole as an all- willed Product returning and producing the Social Individual, who is no longer simply the person whose wants are determined by and satisfied by the Social Whole. This is a new Social Individ- 224 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. ual, the one who represents the Social Whole in its capacity of supplj-ing the wants of the first or immediate Social Individual. Him we have al- ready called the middleman, and have seen him arising in the process of social development, as mercantile and as industrial, when we were con- sidering the single-willed Product and the many- willed Product. But now he is to appear to us in a new light and in a new development ; he is to be seen as universal or as the all-willed Product, culminating in what we have just called the monocratic middleman. Here we come upon the thought of Monopoly which has in the present and in all times pla^^ed such an important part in the history of Society. The truth is the middleman is necessarily a monopolist in the beginning and at the end ; he Avithin limits sets the price upon the article bought and sold; undoubtedly these limits vary much with the circumstances. V>^hen he says to the purchaser, " So much you must pay for this arti- cle," he is exercising one-man power in this rela- tion. On the other hand the purchaser may be able to refuse to give the price, or he may not, his wants compelling him. The fixing of the price by one Will for another Will needing the article is the basic act of all Monopoly and is not necessarily bad. The odious side of Monopoly begins when ad\'antage is taken of the needs of the consumer to extort an unjustly SOCIETY. 225 high price. What constitutes an unjustly high price, is a complicated question ; of its existence, however, there can be no doubt, and through it can arise gross social tyranny of one Will over other Wills. Still the primary trade-act must be considered to be monopolistic, and in the nature of the case cannot help being so. This we may, therefore, call Natural Monopoly, which is the psychical beginning of the middleman. This middleman, as we see by his genesis, is a single Will endowed with the power of the Social Whole which is all-willed in a social sense ; he functions the social Totality, w^hich is to receive, transform, and distribute the social product for the satisfaction of social wants. He is a one- willed manufacturer, buyer and seller (monopolos) , who is socially all-willed; the conjunction of these two elements makes him a monopolist, who can become a benefactor or a despot, socially. Thus Society evolves by its own inner process the mediating Individual, or middleman, as an all- willed Product, whose function is to perform the functions of the Social Whole. He is the cre^i- ture of Society, whose object is to keep creating Society in its social movement ; he is the Social Individual as produced by and producing the Social Whole ; he is the mediating Social Indi- vidual for the immediate Social Individual wuth his products and his wants. In the present field we can observe the general 15 226 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. process to be as follows : First, from Nature and from the Ego itself will come the primal sugges- tion of the monocratic middleman or the mon- opolist. Secondly, the mercantile and especially the industrial middleman, through his own "Will transforming the many-wdlled Product into his own individual property (single- willed again), calls forth many competing Wills as middle- men — Competition, or the separative stage. Thirdly, this new man3^-willed Product, namely, the Social Whole in its competitive conflict, is brought back to unity by a new middleman (social, universal, monocratic ) . (1) We shall first consider Natural Monopoly, which has its psychical starting-point in the mid- dleman who has by Nature his mediating power as distinct from other Social Individuals. The original barterer is naturalhj what he is, having a certain native talent or bent for making himself the mediator of the Social Whole in a primitive state of society. This native ability or inclina- tion for his special work is what primarily selects the middleman and gives him a Natural Monop- oly of business power which may make him the master of a sphere small, great or the greatest. Again, physical Nature places limits which render Monopoly possible, limits of locality, time, and materials. This is, also. Natural Monopoly, springing from Nature who specializes herself in the outer as well as the inner world. On one SOCIETY. 227 side of a ^uiall mountain she produces a grape from which is expressed the finest wine in the world ; the owner of tliose few acres has a Na- tural Monopoly of that wine. Tlie best anthracite coal in the United States is found in a limited portion of Pennsylvania, so that it has formed the basis of a Natural Monopoly. Still we are to note that to seize and exploit such a Natural Monopoly requires the individual with the special talent, Avhich is itself his primal Natural Monop- oly. External Nature, howeve? specialized, can only be monopolized by a mental Monopoly fitted for the enterprise. On the other hand there has probably never yet existed an absolute Monopoly anywhere ; all Monopolies have hitherto shown themselves par- tial, limited, finite. If the price of wheat is forced up by a Monopoly, other grains will be substituted, and thus it is with all necessaries as products. The ordinary Avants of man can be satisfied in different ways and by different arti- cles. Of course an absolute Monopoly can be conceived, for instance that of land, which is limited on the globe. The Social Whole in one phase of its move- ment has a tendency to break up the one Monopoly into many. As we have seen, it produces the middleman who is to function it ; thus it has the power of endowing the individual with its medi- ating principle. Not only one but many individuals 228 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. it can so empower ; in this way a new force be- ofins to enter the social field : the strugfofle of these many middlemen with one another. In such a conjuncture the one will seek to exclude the rest by a higher authority which he invokes, the law. So we have a new kind of Monopoh', originated and protected by the State. Some of these ought to be, such as patents and copyrights; others ought not. A protective tariff is a legal Monopoly which may be justifiable at one time and not at another. Then comes the counter- stroke: the State through its law assails and breaks down Monopoly as contrary to individual freedom under the name of public interest. Again the Social Whole is left free for the middleman. Thus we have traced the general process of Monopoly, which starts as the Natural Monopoly of the one middleman, who is then multiplied by the Social Whole into many middlemen for its ends ; finally the one middleman again gets con- trol over this Social Whole through the State. As this violates the freedom of the individual as well as the Social Whole, the State will in time abrogate its own law or regulation, leaving the Social Whole and the middleman in free activity with each other. The middleman being free in his activity, will begin to exploit his side enormously ; as indus- trial, lie will increase production through concen- SOCIETY. 229 tration of effort and through division of labor as well as through machinery. The result will be that he will not be able to market what he pro- duces, as production has outrun consumption. Then come the fall of prices and the bitter com- petition among the middlemen themselves for the market, in which conflict all Society soon gets in- volved, showing that production is ultimately all- willed, is through all and for all. (2) Such is the outcome of Competition, in which a number of middlemen seek to perform the function of social mediation for the Social "Whole in a branch of business more or less lim- ited. The Social Whole call's forth this multi- plicity, and thus divides up the single Monopoly among many middlemen, each of whom tries to be the sole purveyor of the Social Whole in the branch of business indicated. Thus we behold the realm of social struggle, each individual endeavoring to supplant the other. There is a state of peaceful Competition in which each competitor serves his customers of a certain class or locality, and within these limits he may have a monopoly. But the inherent character of the middleman is to become all- willed and thus to be the complete representative of the Social Whole. Hence Competition is in- clined to engender a state of war, fostering an ajrgressive mood aniono: middlemen, which often CO O ' means the social destruction of rivals. 230 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Such is the negative side of Competition in which the middleman may annihilate his com- petitor, but is likely to cripple if not annihilate himself in doingf so. The Social Whole begins to evolve a new mediating principle, since the competing middlemen in destroying one another have destroyed social mediation. Moreover this war involves the laborer and compels the reduc- tion of his wages or his means of living. Thus the whole fabric of Society becomes disordered through the negative power of Competition, mer- cantile, and specially industrial. Many efforts have been made to get rid of the evil effects of Competition. Some of these end in moral exhortations to brotherly love and humanity , which are well enough, but are not institutional and hence not coercive. Then come attempts to re-model society entirely, of which socialism is the farthest-reaching example. The Social Whole is invoked to cut up Competition by the roots through taking awa}' its human motive, individual ownership. This, however, to cure one negation, introduces a still deeper negation, that of all society as at present constituted. But the Social Whole as existent and always working itself out in the world, will evolve its own new middleman to meet the new emergency. Society as the active all-willed Product will call forth the all-willed middleman in correspondence with itself. There will be a return to Monopoly, SOCIETY. 231 but it will be of a new sort, having passed through and mastered its own Negative, namely Competition. (3) This new middleman, we have already named monocratic (social, universal), and is an evolution out of the previous middleman, who is driven from his monopolistic supremacy by a new monopolist. The market demands a certain quantity of products, which the given middleman can sup- ply ; but other middlemen enter the field and compete with him, taking away his profits and threatening to drive him out of business. As he is the man possessing administrative ability, he seeks to make a new synthesis to meet the emer- gency. Knowing or calculating the demand in his sphere of business, he seizes or combines all the sources of supply, he dictates the quantity of the product and the price both of buying and selling. Those who resist his arrangements are crushed by the enormous power of the combination. Thus he destroys competition by a new associa- tion of capital. Such is the trust with its man- ager, springing out of the previous industrial middleman, who combined Labor and Capital in his enterprise, but who left outside of his organization the rising middleman; the latter enters the same field and competes with him for the consumer. Such competition is now mediated. 232 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Thus appears the new middleman^ the universal, the monocratic, bearing rule over vast industrial domains. He combines the dissident elements ; he unifies the competing enterprises in one or sev- eral branches of business ; he capitalizes the total investment and issues stock in proportion, with which stock he enters the mone}^ market and gets more capital ; he also subjects labor to this new order, so that the workmen of a certain locality may be commanded to cease from produc- tion, lest the supply may be in excess of the demand. In such fashion the universal middleman as in- dustrial monarch bids the war of competition cease, even down to the retailer, drawing what capital he may require not directly from the capitalist usually, but from the universal money- market which he will also control. Both the mercantile and the industrial middleman he sways according to his will, and the laborer is wholly determined by the vast social machine. The social Spirit is now incorporate in the social Monocrat, a new kind of man, not monarch nor aristocrat nor even democrat in the old sense of the term, though he is properly the counterpart of democracy. He is the man in whom Society is at present most deeply interested, being occu- pied in evolving him, with no small curiosity as to what he is going to do with it and with him- self. In him as its middleman the Social Whole SOCIETY. 233 seems destined to find its incarnation according to the present outlook. The social Monocrat is of course not yet su- preme, though moving thitherward. Tlie indus- trial middleman, as was noted, had to look out for three kinds of Competition : that of the labor- market, that of the product-market, and that of the money-market. Only partially at times could he control any one of these markets ; finally thej- would control him. Many middlemen would compete for labor in a given period, and up would go wages; then they would compete in the selling market of their products, and down would go prices ; as to money, in a crisis when they most need it, they often cannot get it at any price. Such a discordant, anarchic, competitive condition of the Social Whole cannot last. But this new middleman will control all three markets — labor, product and money. He has unified or rather reduced to his sway all the com- peting middlemen in one branch or probabl}'^ several cognate branches of business. He con- trols the product-market by limiting the output, and by getting hold of the means of transporta- tion to the market ; he determines the quantity of labor and its reward, closing factories and dis- missing workmen at will ; he goes back of the Bank and manipulates the Bourse or universal money market by means of his stocks. All this is usually done by a company or its Board of 234 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Directors, who, however, have always a guiding spirit, the one Will, the Monocrat. Thus the all-willed Product as social Middle- man comes back to the one-willed social Product, who is also the supreme Producer. In this pro- cess we have returned to the beginning of Posi- tive Society, which was the one Will producing. But the Product is now not simply the material thing but the Social Whole itself as mediated — mediated by its one-willed Product, the Mono- crat. The Social Individual, in the very pursuit of freedom, has called up a master who commands him, confines hiin, compels him. As he is de- pendent on the Social Whole for his daily exist- ence, the least trouble or disease in it affects him. If a panic comes, or if there is a scarcity of the harvest, the Social Individual is involved; if a skillful operator gets hold of the social machin- ery and manipulates it for his own private end, all feel the shock, and the peversion of the Institu- tion. Thus the Social Individual begins to feel himself not liberated, but enslaved by the Social Whole. In passing from Nature to Society he may get to thinking that he has only changed tyrants ; indeed, he may come to believe that Na- ture alone gives freedom, while Society makes the man a slave. A writer and an age may have such a conviction, which sometimes reaches the point of taking possession of literature and starting SOCIETY. 235 men to action in the overthrow of all Society. Such was the cry of Rousseau, and the result was the French Revolution. Thus we come to the reversionary, reactionary , descending stage, which seeks to return to former social epochs, even to get back to Nature. We hold, therefore, that the development of the Social Monocracy is in the order of things, but there is no denying that it has a fearful neg- ative side in it, a destructive energy which may produce the cataclysm of the whole institutional world. The Social Whole unfolding into free- dom may produce the destroyer of that freedom. The political despot of former ages may be suc- ceeded by the social despot of the present age, and the latter may be worse than the former, unless controlled by Law. Hence the new de- mand upon the State just here, and the loud cry for the new lawgiver to step forward and subject the Social Monocrat to legality, protecting him in his just sphere and even fostering the great progressive principle which he embodies, but at the same time curbing him in his violation of institutional freedom. This negative movement of Society is a constit- uent part of the total social process (or the Social Psychosis), and is the element which we are next to consider. 236 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. II. Negative Society. The Social Order as the economic or industrial Society of our modern age, is the very home of negation, conflict, destruction. As this Society has on one side its end in the satisfaction of the wants of the invividual, and as these wants are capable of an almost intinite increase, or an almost infinite diminution, we behold here supremely the arena of individual struggle, of particularism, of selfishness, with their counterpart in human suffering, misery and degradation. In such a condition it is manifest that Society is losing the end of its existence, has, in fact, become neg- ative to the object of its creation. The great purpose of Society is to mediate the wants of the individual through the Institution, and thus to relieve him of the immediate domi- nation of Nature. In other words, man is to ob- tain economic freedom through the Social Order, which is, as already often stated, a form of actualized Will whose end is to secure Free- Will. Thus man is to rise to an ethical life and to be- come institutional just through his wants, receiv- ing a return for his labor through the Social Whole. But the social individual, having liberated him- self from the tyranny of Nature finds himself ex- posed to another and even more terrible tyranny, that of the Social Whole itself, which has taken SOCIETY. 237 the place of the external and largely accidental determination of a state of Nature. The result is the social individual wvaj see himself reduced quite back to the natural individual, with all the wants of his physical being upon him, yet with- out the means of gratifying them through the Institution or through Nature, since the latter has been seized in all her native products and bounties just by the Institution and made over into its property, or into property sanctioned by it. No wonder that the individual becomes negative to Society, when Society has become so negative to him. On the other side stands the individual whose wants are more than satisfied, who, being a colos- sal bundle of pleasures and caprices which are self -generating and hence are ever increasing, demands and obtains gratification, through So- ciety. Such is the grand social dualism. Pov- erty and Wealth, Misery and Luxury, springing just out of the Institution which secures the in- dividual Will, which latter, however, has here divided itself into two Wills, one of which is secured and the other suppressed or destroyed. Truly may Society in its negative aspect be said to fulfill the scriptural declaration: "To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. ' ' The extreme form of the social negation of Society is sometimes heard in the words: " The 238 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. rich become richer and the poor poorer." Thus Society is destroying its very end, and shows in itself the process of its own self -undoing. At the same time, we may here insert, Society is trying to remedy its own evil, to negate its own negative through a system of universal education. The social individual undoubtedly finds himself in a world of dependence, confined on all sides, but just through this dependence he becomes a hnk in the Social Whole ; thus he makes himself neces- sary to the entire chain, and commands it for his end also. To be sure, he must make himself a link through skill and intelligence, he must be trained to see and participate in the Social Whole, and thereby assist in creating it, so that it needs him as much as he needs it. If he be a mere mechanical link, wholly moved from the outside, he can be easily dropped out ; having nothing essential to contribute he cannot receive, and so starves in the midst of plenty. He no longer can take immediately as man cuice did in the primitive condition, everything is already taken. Ultimately the social individual must be able to make his Self a part of the Social Whole, ready to adjust himself and to give what Society will pay for. He must be not simply one link, but ideally all links; that is, he must enter society with an universal training, which is given by education. Not simply a link, but capable of nuiking himself a link, not simi)ly a machine, but a machine-con- SOCIETY. 239 troller; thus Society is seeking to transform every human being born in its bosom through education, by putting into his hand the means of self-liberation from its own tyranny. And Ave may also hope that education will become the corrective of the other extreme, of luxury as well as of poverty. At present, however, our purpose is to set forth the negative forces which have shown themselves in Society, and which are at this mo- ment working in full energy. We shall behold the social individual assailed and tyrannized over by the Social Whole ; then the Social Whole is assailed and tyrannized over by the social individual ; out of which conflict we shall see rising a Perverted Society, the extreme of nega- tion. In the first two cases we have the struggle be- tween Society and the Individual, or, as it is often expressed, the war between Capital and Labor. It is the existent Society, which the individual or the laborino; individual seeks to restrain or con- trol. But when he finds himself defeated, he begins to construct a new Society of his own over against the existent Society which he deems his oppressor. This new Society he proposes to use for his own end, which is to take the place of the normal social Order. Hence we call it a Perverted Society, which is the culmination and final self-undoing of what Ave have here designated 240 (SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. as Negative Society. This process with its three stages is as follows : — I. Society assails the Individual; this will show the three leading social elements — the middleman, the individual as workman or laborer, and the Social Whole in its totality — assailing the social individual in his freedom and thus negativing the end of Society as an Institution. II. The Individual assails Society; this will show the counterpart to the preceding ; the social Individual in self-defense will organize against the Social Whole and pass through the various stages of struggle, triumph and defeat. Finding himself subordinated in the old Society and un- able to control it, he will seek to establish a new Society in opposition. III. Perverted Society; this is a Society or- ganized on a W' holly different principle from the regular or transmiUed Society as it has evolved itself in historic time. Here w^e shall observe three main forms — Communism, Socialism (in- dustrial), and Nihilism. In this process we may likewise note the psy- chical movement. The first stage, in which Society determines or suppresses the Individual, is the immediate one socially, as it is seen in the earliest forms of Society. But in the second stage, when the Individual organizes against the Social AYhole, yet still remains inside of it with his organization (as in labor unions), w^e see the SOCIETY. ^41 separation, the social twofoldness and its strife. The third stage shows the Individual forming a new Society whose essence is to determine and dominate the workman or laborer, and thus it is a return to the first stage, wliich also had this characteristic. We shall find that socialism (the third stage) is a reversion to the first, but after the Individual has passed through the second. I. Society assails the Individual. This is the tyranny of which mention has been made above; the social man, having been freed from the immediate determination of Nature, is assailed and possibly enslaved or annihilated by the great social machine. Thus, Society as an Institution, whose end is freedom on its economic side, is transformed into something just the opposite of itself, having become a crushing despot, or the means of a crushing despotism. The individual may be cut off from all participation in the Social Whole just through the Social Whole, when the latter is manipulated foi" a personal end, by the operator or middleman. Capital, the Corpora- tion, the Trust — many souls, yet not one soul — are some of the well-known social implements which the skillful hand in these days employs against the social individual in order to get a part at least of his part of the remuneration for social effort. The man who is fast in the social ma- chine is no lono;er a freeman, and this conscious- ness he has recently gained partially, and is still IG 242^ SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. gaining amid suffering, and folly, and impreca- tion, often with blows delivered on the wrong thing. 1. The assault through the middleman. Al- ready we have seen Society evolving three kinds of middlemen in gradation: the mercantile, the industrial and the monopolistic. Through the latter comes the assault upon the social individ- ual, as he seizes subtly the might of the Institu- tion and turns its golden stream into his own lap. To be sure, he does this through superior ability which must have superior pay; still he, finding himself in control of the social instruments, is tempted to take more thau his share, and usually he yields to the temptation. He is the exploiter of labor and performs a great function in the economic Order, but he is using it to further his individual end which he pursues with remorseless energy, and with almost unlimited power. The law which ought to limit him he but too often evades or defies or buys. The merchant prince, the industrial king, the railroad emperor are the rulers, quite absolute, being the new magnates who have quite supplanted the aristocracy of birth in a number of lands. lu correspondence with them is the new class of subjects whose effort is controlled and absorbed in part by the new monarchs. How this is done we may glance at in a few words. ( 1 ) First comes the system of wages in modern SOCIETY. 243 society, showing the social individual as wage- earner, whose share in the many-willed product is determined by the middleman largely though not wholly. It is a maxim of Marx and his school that this system of wages is really a sy.stem of slavery, of the last or industrial kind, as Society has for the most part passed through its two former stages of slavery, that of bodily servitude and that of serfdom. We must see what there is of truth in this statement, though we may not be able to accept Marx' remedy. He shows in a very striking way that the wage-earner in the social mechanism is very seriously assailed on the side of his freedom, and that this is done by the middleman manipulating the instrumentalities of Society for his own advantage. That which makes wealth, according to Marx, is the " surplus value" of labor, which really belongs to the laborer, but which the middleman (or the capital- ist in the language of Marx) seizes through the wage-system and appropriates to himself in the shape of profits. Hence it is the interest of the middleman to keep down the wages of the work- man to the point of bare subsistence for himself and for his family, which reproduces labor. (2) The middleman having reduced the work- man to the wage-laborer next proceeds to take his wages or to make them a means of still fur- ther subjection. In connection with the mine or mill or factory the store is established by the 244 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. middleman who compels his workmen to buy their necessaries of life from him, and in this fashion takes another profit out of wages. In like manner the Avorkman's house is often owned by the middleman who has become both industrial and mercantile. Thus the laborer is simply cut oif from the Social Whole as he has nothing to buy and nothing to sell ; the middleman has taken the place of the Social Institution for the social individual, who is, therefore, no longer a mem- ber of Society. The Institution whose function is to secure economic freedom is supplanted by the middleman, who has become the absolute sovereign over the workman. These arrangements may be and often are made with regard to the welfare of the laborer. Even if better housed, fed and clothed than for- merly, he has lost freedom, the boon of life; at best there is a relapse to paternalism, to the patriarchal Society, which may be mild and provi- dent, but which is unfree, and hence in deep collision with his inmost aspiration as well as with the movement of civilization. (3) Still further, inside the workshop the middleman limits the workman more and more in his work, confining him to an ever-diminishing portion of the total product through the division of labor, by which his efficiency is increased. Thereby, however, he becomes a little part of a great mechanism, more and more narrowed in SOCIETY. 245 its existence till his place is actually taken by a machine, when he is thrown out of employment and cast forth into the world. Such is the middleman's negative procedure toward the social individual as workman, whom he has first deprived of surplus earnings, then of social freedom, and finally of work itself as the means of subsistence. The middleman has done all this in the existent social Order, but it is clear that he has subverted the very purpose of Society which is not to destroy but to confirm the freedom of the individual. Thus the middle- man through the manipulation of his resources has made Society negative to itself. Not in all cases is this extreme result reached, still the tendency exists. Not alone is the workman assailed from with- out by the middleman, he is also confronted by a destructive element inside his own class. 2. TJie assault ilirougli the worhman. Con- sidering the social individual still as workman, we are now to see him assailed by his fellow-workman, who will take away his social freedom quite as effectually and with even greater violence than did the middleman. Later we shall note how labor organizes itself primarily to secure its social freedom, but it too will fall into doing just the opposite and will deprive its own class of liberty of action. Some of these manifestations we shall briefly designate here. 246 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. (1) The laborer is forced to join some labor orgranization often against his ^vill: then he is forced to strike against his employers, without any regard to his wishes ; he must lie idle and perchance starve at the command of the new master. Thus the workman orgranizinof himself in pursuit of freedom has destroyed freedom ; he will neither work himself nor let others work ; he has made a Society negative to every end of Society. As this means loss of money, starvation and slavery, there rises opposition. (2) The workman, one or more, declares his independence and starts to work ; he seeks to free himself of this new slavery coming from his class. In one form or other the conflict opens between the workmen themselves, a kind of civil war in the laboring ranks. Often there are pitched battles, m which the State has to be in- voked to preserve the peace. (3) The result is the establishment of a reign of terror by labor over labor ; the organization of workmen annihilates the individual workman. The latter has a new and peculiar fear in the social organism: he is afraid to work. The pri- mordial right of man, the right of living by his own hands, is taken away. No Asiatic despotism has ever so fundamentally assailed and destroyed the social individual. Of course, all this is done in the name of liberty, which, however, has un- done even the liberty of work. SOCIETY. 247 As the workmuu with wife and children must live, he turns like a beggar to picking up what he can find outside his vocation, from which he has been expelled. An outcast from the Social Order which he wishes to serve, he goes forth to a new locality in order to begin life afresh. In the hope of escaping the destructive energy which his own class has generated, he flees to some un- observed nook where he may still find the liberty to work. But he may experience even in the remote cor- ner that there is a negative force coming from the social Order and penetrating his little world. 3. The assault through Society as a Whole. The social individual is also exposed to the great general movements of the social Order, which at given periods become negative and produce what are called " Hard Times." These movements do not proceed from an individual like the mid- dleman, nor from a class like the workmen, though both are included. The Social Whole has its own life, its own process accompanied with relapses and convulsions of various kinds, which thrill through the organism and involve every member. Production is a social act, the result of many Wills co-operating, indeed of the whole social Order. It is not easy to assign to each his share in the many-willed Product ; this difficulty calls forth the wage-system which gives to the work- iM^ 248 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. man at least his immediate sustenance, and it may be more. But Competition enters, which is a kind of war between industrial middlemen for the profits of a business which has a good market. But the market is after all limited and becomes overstocked; at this point Competition enters fiercely, cutting down profits and also wages. As the majority of people are dependent on wages, their ability to purchase is lessened by a decline in their earnings. Such a decline be- comes general and everybody is more or less affected. In order to prevent Competition from destroy- ing them, the industrial middlemen begin to com- bine instead of competing with one another. The extent of the market is known and production is adjusted to it, whereby profits are saved. Thus we have the phenomenon of the Trust in its recent colossal development. Then ('ombination in its turn becomes tyrannical, dictating every- thino; in its field and crushiuo^ out the social indi- vidual both as workman and as merchant. But the most striking instance of the social individual assailed and rendered helpless by a great social movement is seen in the panic. In addition to economic causes (such as over-pro- duction, speculation, etc.), there comes into play the subjective factor, which is most important. An universal distrust of every social instrument seizes the whole body of Society, and a rush is SOCIETY. 249 made specially to realize every form of credit. Then consumption dwindles, particularly of all unessential articles ; vast quantities of labor are thrown out of employment, and the laborer has to purchase the least possible, and so is forced to add to the depression. Such is the social Fate which seems to be always hanging over the individual, and which he himself helps to create. , Thus Society may assail its individual member Th-x \i^ through its Panic (1), which springs forth usu- ^ ^ ally unforeseen and rages like an epidemic, smit- ing right and left all classes of people as if it '^ were an avenging Nemesis for some great social transgression, which it doubtless is. Then comes the assault w^hich springs from Competition (2) of the middlemen, who first assail one another, but after a time involve everybody in their con- flict, especially their own workmen, who have at last, like the common soldier, to sustain the bur- den of the war. But the Competitors also suffer, and so they make peace with one another and enter into a Combination (3) which is to do away with the war of Competition, and control all pro- duction as well as the producers. The Social Body, at least in the given sphere, has now a mas- ter, whose development we have traced more fully in another connection. This master (mo- nopolist, monocrat) w'ill have the function of preserving the Social "Whole from the sudden and unexpected throes of the Panic, as well as from -t^ 250 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS the destructive war of Competitiou. Such we ma}'^ deem his good side, but on the other hand social freedom lies at his feet, or perchance under his feet if he chooses to put it there. It is manifest at this stage that the Social Wiiole which man has projected out of himself into the world for the purpose of actualizing his Free-Will more completely, and has made the mediator of his Wants, has indeed helped him to one kind of freedom, freedom from the domina- tion of Nature. But it has begotten a new kind of subjection, the individual has become depend- ent just on this Social Whole, its action and non- action, often irregular enough; if its j^rocess be interrupted — and we have seen it to be exposed to various kinds of interruption — he may be cut off from his food, and even from the oppor- tunity to labor. The result must be that he will rise against the Social Whole and seek to deter- mine it, or at least to prevent it from determining him so absolutely. We may indeed call it the new struggle for freedom. But ere we pass to this part of our subject, we may glance back of the social phase we have just passed through, under the caption Society assails the Individual. This assault we have seen tak- ing place through the three main social factors — through the mediating princl[)le or middleman, through the Social Individual himself as the pro- ducer or workman, and throuah the Social Whole SOCIETY. 251 in its totality, whicli is finally represented by a single Will, a master and possibly a tyrant. Accordingly we shall next witness the counter movement which will show the Social Individual organizino; himself against Societv, in order to control it and make it secure his freedom, which it has jeoparded, if not destroyed. II. The Individual assails Society. Here is specially the sphere of conflict. It now is the turn of the Social Individual to move. Knowing that he is as necessary to the Social Whole as it is to him, he organizes himself into a new So- ciety, thus making two within the Social Whole. He withdraws and stops the working of the lat- ter or deranges it greatl3^ His blow is directed against the middleman, but it involves the whole community, and may extend much further. This is a move for freedom, freedom from the Social Machine with its servitude. The work- men organize into their own combination against the combination of wealth and refuse to give their labor to the Social Whole, whose food is this labor. So the laborer is forced to learn something of organization, and he enters the struggle, which at first wins, provided that he keeps within bounds and seeks a true social freedom. But ho will not keep within such bounds, success will destroy him by bringing him to do the ver}' wrong which he fights against. His special asso- ciation will bo guilty of the same a i(j]ation oi' 26S SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. freedom which he complains of in the Social Order, and which he has organized it to suppress. Thus he must in the end be defeated, in fact he defeats himself. 1. Organization of Labor. One of the great social phenomena of the present is the power which labor has shown of organizing itself and conducting a long and bitter campaign. Often this organization exists, not with a neg- ative purpose directly, its design is not to assail, but to supplant by self -effort the middleman. The laborer becomes or calls forth his own mid- dleman, and thus re-establishes society in its simple form, producing a kind of reversion to primitive conditions — co-operation, profit-shar- ing, labor-banks, etc. But these can hardly be permanent in spite of local or temporary success. They are a corrective more than a substitute, and their real purpose is to cause a reformation in oppressive business methods. The organization of labor is directed chiefly against the existent abuse or tyranny of the mid- dleman, who is employing social instrumentalities for his own individual ends. If he can be brought to terms, the struggle usuallv subsides, for a time at least. The fundamental object of the organization of labor is to secure social free- dom when assailed, but this organization itself often assails social freedom. There has always been some form of associa- SOCI£TY. 368 tion among workmen for their protection The guilds of the Middle Ages are well known, and have transmitted some of their characteristics to the present. But the modern organization which has a special distinction is called the Trades Union ; this was in recent times over- topped by the Knights of Labor, which ex- tended throughout the nation, and sought to com- bine all laborers in one general society. Karl Marx and his associates did not like the national limit and so formed the International, which en- deavored to combine the workmen of all nations into a united power, which evidently Marx himself was to control. But this has fallen to pieces. Still labor has kept up its national and local or- ganization, which on provocation and sometimes without sufficient provocation declares war. 2. The triumph of labor. This must take place when labor makes itself the champion of . those oppressed by the middleman or by perverse social arrangements. When the laborer has to i ' nX*M live in the house owned by his employer, buy at ' "^ the latter's store, and pay the prices, not of the ' market but those dictated by the firm he works ^ for, he is socially enslaved, he is no longer a member of the Social Whole and its process, but is forced out of it and put under a master. When organized labor declares war against such an oppressor, it is upholding the cause of man's freedom, it is seeking to restore the right of F 264 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Society to people from whom it has been taken away. In such a case the individual is assailing So- ciety, but he has his justification. Just as polit- ical rebellion must sometimes be resorted to for the sake of vindicating Free- Will, so this social rebellion has its place, at least in the present order of things. The Constitution of the United States is supposed to have solved the problem of political Revolution, but there is as yet no legal document which is able fully to cope with social revolt in the economic world. The war comes on and is fought out to the bitter end, no ade- quate mediation having yet been discovered. Often arbitration is spoken of as the means and is sometimes employed. But the arbitrator has no power of enforcing his judgment, it is not Law, it is not an integral part of the State, which has as its function to secure by might the enact- ment whose object is to vindicate freedom. When each side must consent to the decision, it is not truly institutional, and hence is no solu- tion of the trouble. The State must be the final justiciary, who is to declare and to enforce Free- will through the Law. In this conflict we may note the usual stages through which the two opposing sides pass. (1) Organized labor states to the middleman or em- ployer its grievances not only in the matter of wages, but in other matters wherein the social SOCIETY. 255 freedom of the workman is violated or too much curtailed. (2) When the demands of organized labor are not listened to, then it withdraws from production and there is what is known as the strike. This is the social war which inflicts in- jury on both sides; one set is losing wages, the other profits and interest and probably more. (3) The outcome in the present case is that la- bor is recognized, it has made valid its defense of freedom, having compelled the middleman or other aggressor to cease from his assault on the social freedom of the workman, and to stop using social means to pervert or destroy the end of Society. This is undoubtedly a great public service per- formed by organized labor. But now comes the hardest test, the test of success. Will labor abuse its victory? The fact must be confessed that it has never failed to grow tyrannical in tri- umph ; nay it usually begins its tyranny before victory in order to win victory, and the result is that it is almost always defeated. For when labor organized becomes as bad as the middleman or even worse, what is the gain in changing mas- ters? Thus we have to chronicle the next stage. 3. The defeat of labor. It has become a com- mon statement that nearly every strike is a failure, even though it begins with good prospects and with public sympathy. And the fact is unques- tionable that organized workmen are apt to •2o6 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. become more tyranuical than any other class of men in modern Society. The consequence is that there is a ver}^ grave doubt even among well- wishers whether the labor organization can ob- tain the freedom and the rights which it ought to have. When its cause is just and is for the pub- lic good and for progress, it is sure to lose by its fatal management. The laborer when he starts to fight for liberty, turns at once to a despot. He seems wholly unable to keep himself out of this self-destroying contradiction, and no labor leader has yet appeared who can restrain his fol- lowing from logical suicide. In fact he usually becomes the leader by spurring men on to vio- lence which must come back to themselves. From vindicating its own right, labor passes over to assailing the right of the middleman and of the Social Whole. When it finds it has the power, it starts to abusing its victory, too often led by the agitator, the sorehead, the demagogue. Labor in its turn assailincf the Free- Will is and must be finally defeated, it has logically undone itself. So we have also the spectacle of the tyranny of labor over the middleman, following on the tyranny of the middleman over labor. (1) Labor seeks to control the private busi- ness of the middleman, or to dictate in uuitters which do not pertain to it. Here it assumes authority where there is no responsibihty, and reallv assails the Social Whole, which is to secure SOCIETY. 257 economic freedom to all. Hence this blow it gives to its own principle. (2) Labor turns and enslaves its own. The organization seeks to enforce its mandate upon every laborer, whether he belongs to it or not, whether he wills so or not. If he offers to work, he meets with violence. Thus the tyranny of labor destroys the freedom of labor ; the organization becomes a double tyrant, against its own mem- bers and against all who wish to work. (3) At this point the State is assailed in its fundamental object, and has to put down labor by violence, so that the outcome of the tyranny of labor is the defeat of labor by means of that Institution whose supreme function is to secure Free-Will by law backed up with power. Un- doubtedly such a defeat has its drawback, for it is apt to endow the middleman with a new lease of tyrannous exaction which has to be put down in its turn by law for the sake of vindicating the Free-Will of the individual. Such is, then, tiie bitter dualism into which modern Society in its negative movement is con- stantly falling. Neither the Social Individual nor the Social Whole can be entrusted with the duty of actualizing social freedom, which is the great end of all human association. Each will tyrannize over the other if it gets the chance, and thus we witness that everlasting see-saw be- tween labor and capital, which has become the 17* l'58 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. t}^ical fact of the present social world. It is no wonder that many attempts are made to cure the trouble, or even to get rid of the couflict by getting rid of both sides in their present form. The Social Individual being defeated and put down inside the Social "Whole, will in many cases submit ; but in other cases he will proceed to build a new Society outside the Social "Whole and in opposition to its movement. As the Social Individual and the Social Whole have both failed to secure the social good, and have ended in tyranny, both are to be deprived of their power and transformed ; the new Social "Whole is to eliminate the middleman and his pursuit of wealth, while the new Social Individual is to abjure his social freedom and be directed by the Social "Whole immediately in his labor. Thus Societ}^ is wheeled about and made to move in just the opposite direction to its course hitherto ; it is inverted, or rather perverted from its insti- tutional end. This important stage of Negative Society is worthy of a careful and prolonged look. III. Perverted Society. A new society rises against Societj^ a social institution whose object is to supplant or destroy the Social Institution. Or such a doctrine is affirmed and attempts are made to carry it out. But what element of So- ciety shall be eliminated, what be made the basis of the new society? SOCIETY. 2o9 The Social Whole must be ordered now in some form that it may control the individual. While recoo-nizing his wants, it is to assign him his task. In some manner or other Society must make every person will the whole, and take away the pursuit of gain, of individual striving. As at present constituted, Society is the arena of individual self -exploitation ; this must be cut off in a new order. Of course such a Society turns about the very end of the existent Society, hence we call it per- verted. Ordinarily Society is just that Institu- tion which is to mediate human want, not to destroy or even limit it. Any want can be grati- fied, provided it be done through the Institution. Satisfaction of wants Society is not to curb, if the man earns or inherits the fortune he is spending. Accordingly, a new social form is called into existence, or at least is theoretically set forth, whose object is to displace the old social form which has unfolded with the ages. These two social forms are in essential respects the oppo- sites of each other, and this opposition turns chiefly upon the individual ownership of property. The new social form seeks to construct an in- stitution and to endow it with an authority which assigns to the individual his end in the Social Whole, directing and controlling his effort not to his end, but to its end. Thus it aims at the 260 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. absolute socialization of man as against his per- sonal pursuits, especially that of wealth. His purpose in life and his career are determined from the outside by the Social Whole which is the sole owner and distributer. Manifestly the new Institution, in seeking to save the individual from poverty and to bring- about social equality, has destroyed freedom. In order to nullify selfishness, it has nullified selfhood; if the social individual is liberated from the oppression of the middleman, he is, on the other hand, enslaved to the Social Whole, which is now the universal capitalist, and cer- tainly can become just as tyrannical as the indi- vidual capitalist, while to escape from it is more diflicult. The idea or the scheme of this new social form is usually called sociaUsm, as its whole stress lies upon the socialization of man. The term social- ism, however, is very indefinite and is applied to many diverse, in fact to quite all phases of social transformation. Certain functions performed by modern governments, as the mail service, are of- ten called socialistic. The tendency of the State at the present time toward ownership of railroads, telegraphs, etc., is usually designated as a social- istic tendency. Many impro^'ements which have as their end the security of the individual and his rights are classed under the very general name of socialism. SOCIETY. 261 Evidently there are two main kinds of social- ism, one positive and one negative, one of which affirms the existent social order and endeavors to carry it forward in the line of its normal devel- opment, while the other seeks to overturn it, or perchance to tm'n it round and make it flow just in the opposite direction. This would be Society not only diverted but perverted, made to face about and go the other way, and do and be just the other of itself. In socialism, then, we be- hold the two great tendencies, the evolutionary and the revolutionary — the one co-operating with Society as now historically developed, the latter wheeling it around toward the opposite goal and thereby making a wholly new institution, or trj'ing to do so. Moreover, the fact again comes to light that perversion is also a reversion, quite as we saw in the case of the Family. The new social form, when looked into with historical eyes, is found to be in many respects one of the oldest of social forms, which Society as a whole has transcended, even if it must now and then go back and take a dip in its earliest fountain. The socialistic ideal has its likeness to the primitive Village Com- munity which assigned to the individual member his share of the common produce, or his lot for tillage out of the common lands. In the present account of Perverted Society we intend to d(>al with the negative or revolutionary 262 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. phase of socialism ; the evolutionary phase will be considered later. The supreme object of this sort of socialism is to construct asocial system of its own, at whose disposal it places the social indi- vidual, in order to rescue him from the tyranny of the middleman. The difficulty here lies at hand. This new Society must be administered by an in- dividual, who can, in his turn, become a tyrant and rouse hostility. Thus, socialism is always, when at the point of realization, also at the point of self -dissolution ; it puts one tyranny in the place of another. The phenomena of revolutionary socialism (in the sense just given) arrange themselves in distinct groups, which shade into one another, but which can be marked distinctly in their gen- eral outline as well as in their fundamental thought. There is, first, what is usually called Communism, w^hich word, however, we shall re- serve for a more pressing need as well as for a more fitting place ; this stage we shall here name Communistic Socialism. Its members usually form a peaceful, retired non-combative com- munity, seeking rather a primitive idyllic exist- ence than a militant i)ropagandism of their doc- trine. For the most part this sort of sociahsm has a religious origin and keeps up its religious character. Quite the opposite is the second sort of socialism, which we shall call Industrial So- cialism, and which at present is the dominant SOCIETY. 2G3 school. It is not retiring, but aggressive, on the whole anti-religious, materialistic, sensuous, determined to get and to swallow its share of good things of this world. It cultivates chiefly the proletariate endeavoring to weld this class into a social unit by itself, which will be strong enough to take possession (peaceably if it can, forcibly if it must) not only of other classes of society but of all institutions (Marx). Very easily does this pass over into the third kind of socialism known as Nihilism, in which the present negative movement winds itself up in the destruction of all institutions, secular and religious. Some remarks will be devoted to expanding these three socialistic groups, all of them revolu- tinary, yet in different ways. 1. Communistic Socialism. Most of the com- munistic societies of the world have had their origin in religion. Indeed the religious con- sciousness has an element of communism in its very nature. The fatherhood of God must have as its corollary the brotherhood of man, and this brotherhood is to be realized in an institution whose members share everything equally like brothers. The earliest Christian society, that of the disciples, was communistic, and this example has often been cited and followed by bodies of men and women. From the bejjinnincr of Chris- tianity down to the present this phase has never (juite lapsed, and at times breaks out with sudden 264 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. fervor. Saint Simon called his chief work the " New Christianity," and started into life the modern socialistic agitation of France. But the grand arena for communistic experiments has been America, where was abundance of land, and no interference from Church or State or People unless roused by moral violation. An account of these has been given by Nordhoff in his Com- munistic Societies of the United States. These are attempts at putting an ideal social condition into livnnof realitv. In contrast Avitli them we must mention two most famous communistic schemes which have remained purely ideal, but which have had a deep influence upon men's minds in the present direction. One is ancient, Plato's Republic; the other is modern, More's Utopia; neither of them is distinctively religious, but social and political. 1. The communistic Society is based pri- marily upon the community of goods as its dis- tinctive social principle, which, as before said, is general 1}'- enforced by religious sanctions. Its natural home is in the country, and its natural vocation is agriculture. It belongs to a simple- hearted folk who love peace, a certain degree of seclusiveness, and their own religious commun- ings. The question has been asked whether the members of such a community will do their full quota of work, as the motive of self-interest is absent. They are certainly not the people to SOCIETY. 266 develop the resources of a great country, though they are industrious and honest and frugal. 2. When it conies to the Family there is great variation in the attitude of the different associa- tions. Some have a community of wives, or what the Oneida Society calls complex marriage. Others have no wives at all, as the Shakers, but remain celibates, recruiting their numbers by converts and by adopting poor children. Still others limit marriage and place it under various restrictions. Then 'again there are attempts to limit the number of children after marriage. In many of them a religious tone exists which dis- courages matrimony, holding it to be less con- sistent with the divine will than celibacy. Most of this proceeds doubtless from the imitation of early Christian example as set forth in the New Testament, which, as we have already seen, is not especially favorable to the Family. On the whole, therefore, communistic socialism must be pronounced to be quite uncertain about itself in regard to the domestic institution. 3. In regard to the State the communistic society finds itself in a condition of passive an- tagonism. Indeed if its principles were univer- sally carried out, they would overthrow the government of any country probably, certainly that of the United States. For the communistic society is necessarily a despotism, however mild this mav bo. Savs Mr. Nordhoff : " The funda- 266 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. mental principle of communal life is the subordi- nation of the individual will to the general interest or the general will; practically this takes the shape of unquestioning obedience of the members toward the elders or chiefs of their society." Thus we see something like the old patriarchate w'ith its absolute authority. Such a community is therefore, revolutionary, though peaceful and non-resistent. It is a society which rises up inside Society against Society. It seeks not to overturn by open violence or by secret machination, still it aims at the grand social overturn. A free State tolerates this oppo- sition to itself as a religious or social conviction. But such a community is none the less negative to the universal social order of man as this has developed itself up to date. Hence it is to be set down as a form of Perverted Society, whose first, most immediate, most implicit stage it is, often quite unconscious of itself and of its own perversion. Moreover we should note that the present per- version is likewise a reversion. We shall soon have occasion to speak of the Village Community as a phase of primitive society, almost whollj' agricultural, communistic as to land, often acting despotically toward the individual, a marvelous prototype of the modern institution which we have just been describing. Thus we shall see that this primordial social unit often reproduces SOCIETY. 267 itself, especially in a simple rural, unadvanced population, alongside of the social forms' of the latest civilization. Such are, in general, the social, domestic and political relations of these communistic societies, which necessarily are revealed in their dealings with Property, Family, and State. They have, moreover, a tendency to inner disintegration, their number and their membership have dimin- ished in the United States. They cannot stand civilization any more than can the Indian, who also lives in a primitive Village Community, which, however, is not a reversion, but is original. The cause of dissolution is usually the absolute authority of the patriarchate which drives off many of the younger members who will not en- dure the suppression of their individuality. It is the spirit of young America that breaks down the communal principle, or quits it for a free career in the outside world. The next step is that socialism will enter just the realm of modern civilization, from which it shrank in the communistic society. Out of its narrow, self-sufficient life in the country, where wants w^ere essentially limited to and satisfied by the community, we now behold socialism ste})ping forth into the very center of the industrial arena of the most advanced peoples. 2. Industrial Socialism. Thus we name the present j^hnse, roughly indicating thereby i(s 268 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. general character as well as its origin. It belongs to the city rather than to the country, springs up in the manufacturing class rather than in the agricultural ; it is aggressive, defiant, for peace or war according; to the outlook. It seeks the material well-being of the w^orkman, and believes chiefly in that. Its tendency, on the whole, must be pronounced to be antagonistic to religion, though not many socialists go to the length of the socialist Marr, who says: " The idea of God is the kej^stone of a perverted civilization. It must be destroyed. The true root of liberty, of equality, of culture, is Atheism" (Cited in Hae, Contemporary/ Socialism, p. 119). This, of course, quite touches the point of Nihilism. On the other hand it should be mentioned that there is or has been an active body of propagand- ists who call themselves Christian Socialists. Two parties under this name have arisen in Ger- many, one of Catholic origin (Bishop Ketteler) and the other of Protestant (Pastor Todt). In England also the same name (Christian Socialists) was applied to a band of reformers whose leading spirit was Maurice. Still there is a general agreement of opinion that the Industrial Social- ism of the present is not religious in its origin, character, or reverence. Its materialism is un- disguised, its sensism repels most people who have any faith in the Unseen. The idea of socialism in its industrial phase is SOCIETY. 269 a collective capital belonging to the Social Whole, employed for production through labor, and dis- tributed equitably to the producer (who is the laborer), by the Social Whole. The two ex- tremes are Production and Distribution ; between the two lies the Social Whole, which is both owner and distributer, taking the place of the middleman in exploiting the laborer, owning the capital, and distributing the product. The So- cial Whole thus becomes the all-dominating factor, with its centralized capital and equally centralized authority over both production and distribution. Says Schafle in his book, The Quinf essence of Socialism, probably the clearest account of this complicated subject: "The Alpha and Omega of socialism is the transforma- tion of private competing capitals into a united collective capital," which is to be wholly man- ipulated by the socialistic unit. Just here lies the overwhelming difficulty in the scheme of socialism. It is evident that the Social Whole, with this socialistic burden upon it, will have a task many times greater than that of any government which ever existed. Its administrator, however appointed, will have a power more searching, more absolute over the individual than any other monarch of Europe, not excepting the Tsar of Russia. Its horde of officials will constitute an army, the like of which has never been seen at any time in any country 270 SOCIAL IXSTITUTIONS. of the world. In fact, no socialist has ever ap- proachingly solved this phase, the political phase, of the problem. Industrial Socialism has become an historical fact reaching quite through the nineteenth cen- tury, and the best wav of grasping its movement is to look at its history. It has swept through the three leading countries of Europe — England. France and Germany, in the order of time, and with special developments in each case. Still, all three reveal one spirit, which takes its origin in an industrial civilization. 1. We shall begin with England, in which country industrialism first fully developed itself, and also the philosophy of it in the old Pohtical Economy. The first organizing socialist was Robert Owen (1771-1858), born in Wales, man- ager of a cotton mill in Manchester, England, manufacturer and philanthropist at New Lanark, Scotland, founder of a socialistic settlement at New Harmony, Indiana, and finally propa- gandist of socialism in London. Owen beo^an on the practical side ; he had the full round of social experience, as he had been laborer, owner and capitalist, and then reformer. Thus he had the whole cycle of socialism at work within him, and out of his life it unfolds more than out of the life of any other man. He was the most prolific genius in the organization of social ideas, he seems to have contained implicitly the entire SOCIETY. 271 future development of socialism. According to trustworthy accounts he estabhshed out of the most degraded human elements a kind of labor- ers' paradise at New Lanark ; he started infant schools lono^ before the kindergfarden of Froebel existed ; he was the chief originator of the fac- tory acts of the English Parliament, which have become a part of the beneficent legislation of all civilized nations. On the whole, Owen is the most interesting, and in himself the most complete figure in the history of socialism though he has strong rivals. He is personally the embodiment of the social- istic idea centering in the Social Whole which is to look after the laborer and even the laborer's children, which is to conduct the business of a vast organization with supreme administrative ability, and which is to assign justly to everyone the fruits of his labor. All these talents Owen possessed and practically exercised ; he was the veritable incarnation of the total socialistic pro- cess. Socialists after him will be laborers, agi- tators, theorists, separately; but no one will represent the great central fact, as well as prime difficulty of socialism, the administration of the unified social Whole, as did Robert Owen. The latter part of his life was not successful. His strength lay in the practical field which he quit for the theoretical, venting his negative opinions on religion and on the family and on 272 SOCIAL IXSTITUTIONS. other matters quite outside of the true bent of his genius. The result was, he lost his prestige and almost his good name, so that he has hardlj yet received due credit for his wonderful fertility of thought. Then his literary expression was inadequate; though he wrote a good deal, he has left no epoch-making book. He probably gave to Marx the idea of surplus value, which is the central principle of Marx' famous book Das Kap- ital. At least the idea is said to be fullj' stated, with the socialistic consequences drawn from it, in some of Owen's eavXy writings. 2. French socialism of the present century is to be chiefly ascribed to the theories of Saint Simon (1760-1825) whose influence culminated some years after that of Owen, though the latter was the younger man. Saint Simon's socialism is theoretical at the start ; it begins with books, not with deeds, wherein he stands in contrast with Owen, who made his ideas real before he expounded them to any extent in writ- ing. The school of Saint Simon was mainly composed of highly educated and learned men who elaborated and* propagated the sj^stem of their master. Much practical fruit it never bore ; it remained an idea, or more often a sentiment Avhich stirred the hearts of impressionable French- men with benevolence, as its leading doctrine was that " the end of all Societ}'^ was the ameli- oration of the poorest class." Louis Blanc felt SOCIETY. 273 this practical inadequacy and wrote his Organiz- ation du Travail for the purpose of rousing French socialists to strive for practical results which he tried to bring about by establishing his social workshops. Saint Simon belonged to the old nobility of France, and his socialism is largely the result of a reaction against the individualistic tendencies of the French Revolution. Still he does not pro- pose to go back to the old feudal regime, but to advance to the new order which is the socialistic. His ideas have had a great influence upon a cer- tain class of ardent minds, and upon French workmen in the large manufacturing centers. But the French peasant is the unshaken foe of socialism with its supposed attempt to get his few acres of land, which he loves; for the same reason he hates the old monarchy with its feud- alism, from which during the Revolution he wrenched his little estate. Hence these millions of peasants with their adherents support the present French Republic and have given to it an unexpected stability, as they regard it their bul- wark ag-ainst feudalism on the one side and so- cialism on the other. The system of the socialist Fourier had also some adherents in France, and in other countries, but its influence was by no means equal to that of Saint Simon's work. Sociahsm, notwithstanding the stir it has made in Paris, Lyons and some other large towns, has 18 274 SOCIAL INSTITUTION'S. never gotten political possession of France, nor will it, in the present attitude of the French peasantry and landed proprietors. French Socialism, at least, in its earlier form, may be said to h:ive spent itself in the Parisian Revolution of 1848. In the Fifties it was qui- escent, if not moribund, though it still had its fervent disciples. English socialism was at this period in a similar condition. But in the sixties socialism passed to the third great Euro- pean nation, in which it was destined to celebrate its proudest trium})!! and to find its most influen- tial writers. This was Germany. A man arose equally gifted in theory and practice, equally ready for speculation and action, though he Avas anything but a son of toil, like Owen. Indeed he Avas a gilded son of pleasure while organizing German labor. 3. Such was the wonderful phenomenon named Ferdinand Lassalle, whom A exander von Hum- boldt baptized as Z)«.s' Wunderldnd. He was the founder of German socialism and established its apostolate, which has sent forth nniny enthusiastic and persistent disciples, who have kept the cause flourishing in Germany and have propagated it in the other parts of the world. Lassalle was succeeded by a greater man than himself, though not a greater genius, Karl Marx. The latter is verily t';e' prophet of Industrial So- cialism, having written what has been called the SOCIETY. 275 Bible of the German workingman, who has, in- deed, to a large extent cast off the other Hebrew- Bible. It is a surprising fact that both Lassalle and Marx, the great apostles of the native Ger- man proletariate, were born Jews, with the ad- vantages of a University education and of parental property. One is inclined to see in their social- istic absolutism a strain of the Oriental conscious- ness, if not a reversion to Hebrew paternalism. At any rate both are bitter enemies of the modern political freedom of the individual, which is an evolution of European races as distinct froui the Asiatic. With Marx especially all Institutions, State, Church, and Family also largely are swal- lowed up in the one social Institution, whose great end is to secure an increased material sub- sistence to the laborer. A kind of pantheistic absorption of the individual into the all devour- ing Social Whole is the main article of the new faith which is to supersede all need of pat- riotism or religion. It was the natural outcome of Marx' doctrine and probably of his birth that he could found the so-called International, hav- ing little sympathy with the National in any form. This brings us to say a few words about Marx' leading idea which is that of "surplus value," whose meaning is, that while labor is the source of all value, the laborer gets only enough of this value to pay for the bare subsistence of himself 27r. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. and his family, the surphis going into the pockets of the capitalist. The " surplus value " of the product, which in justice belongs to the laborer producing it, is appropriated under the present system by the middleman. This is, in fact, the generating idea of all industrial socialism, and was distinctly seen and formulated by Owen and his followers. The capitalist or middleman robs the laborer of his just share of the common prod- uct through the system of wages, which makes the workingman himself a commodity, a thing bought and sold in the labor-market, a wage- slave as he now often calls himself, in distinction from the land-slave or serf, and from the body- slave. For " the iron law of wages " binds him in its fetters, giving him barely enough to repro- duce himself, first in the physical sustenance of his own body, then in that of his children, who are to furnish the future labor-market with wage- slaves for capital. To this inner pressure comes the outer war of competition between the middle- men themselves, into whose fluctuations the laborer is necessarily drawn and suffers. The doctrine that labor is the source of value is derived from Adam Smith and especially from Ricardo, and thus Marx has forced the old ortho- dox Political Economy of England into socialism, which fact has been one cause of its recent dis- credit. The sensism of Marx shows itself in his ascribing all value to the brawn of the laborer SOCIETY. 277 and little or none to the brain of middleman, the undertaker and executor of great business enter- prises which employ labor. Yet Marx springs intellectually from the idealist Hegel, whose negative dialectic he uses with commanding skill, but whose positive institutional element he not only ignores but destroys. Lassalle w^as also in his early career a follower of Hegel. Many reasons have been assigned why socialism takes no deep hold upon Anglo-Saxon peoples. It has been imported into America by German immigrants, but has a tendency to die out in the second generation. On the whole the native American can sec in pure socialism little hope of social salvation, though he is ready to accept, and is getting ready to apply practically certain ideas often called socialistic, such as the mu- nicipal ownership of some kinds of public service. But the massive political burden of universal socialism he refuses to take upon himself, since he, as a voter, is ultimately the law-maker and ruler. Hence he feels his own political responsi- bility, which he cannot throw off upon an abso- lute government in which he has no hand. The German, trained under a system of paternalism, seems to think that the State can do anything, can introduce the socialistic scheme by fiat. Few Americans, owing to their political experience in self-government, entertain any such delusion. They have already trouble enough in keeping the 278 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. administration of city and State in fair condi- tion, and they are wary of adding to the diffi- culty. Still there is little doubt that certain thoughts, which have been thrown up to the surface by the socialistic agitation, are having and will continue to have an influence upon Amer- ican legislation. 3. JSfihUism. We have now reached the last phase of this negative movement of Society, in which the negation becomes completely explicit, frankly proclaiming its own character and nam- ing itself accordingl3\ Men have come to the point of associating in order to destroy all forms of association as these exist at present ; the very fact of their being shows that they ought not to be. A society of Nihilists must, of course, soon annihilate itself. The doctrine is different from Socialism (in the sense here used), but easily and indeed na- turally springs out of it by abstracting its neg- ative side and making the same the end. The direct object of Nihilism is to destroy the social Whole, not to transform it by peaceful means. The institution is to be abolished, the mediation of human wants through Society is declared to be tyranny, hostile to man's Free Will, which is to exist only in its immediate form and not in- stitutionally. This is the complete reversion to the state of violence, wherein we see a return to the purest individualism. Here Nihilism becomes SOCIETY. 279 the opposite of Socialism, though it too can only end in the domination of the strongest. Thus Socialism is devoured by its own child. One country in Europe has been the chief scene of Nihilism, Eussia. It exists in all lands, but it has specially thriven among Slavonic peoples. Teutonic socialism, passing over the border to the East, became Eussian Kihilism. The Strang- est fact about it is that it traces its intellectual origin to Hegel's philosophy, which early split into two main divisions (often said to be three), the positive and the negative. The negative Hegelians, usually called the Hegelian left, de- veloped the dialectical side of Hegel and hurled it remorselessly against all existent reality. From the German universities Russian students carried this negative Hegelianism into Russia, and applied its destructive criticism to the social and political institutions of their fatherland. Stern repres- sion followed, which met wdth obstinate re- sistance, physical and intellectual; out of the collision Nihilism has developed, practical and theoretical. In Germany, we may here add, this negative Hegelianism ran its course and finally negated it- self, as it must, but at the same time it destroyed the Hegelian philosophy, almost extirpating this branch of study from the German Universities. Now comes another curious fact : positive Hegel- ianism has taken refuge in Anglo-Saxon coun- 280 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. tries, in England and America, where it is much studied, and is slowly being made the theoretical basis of just that institutional world, which it, on its dialectical side, was once invoked to destroy. Such are the two opposing streams of influence which have their sources in the great German philosopher. Nihilism has passed through a number of trans- formations. It is so completeh' dialectical that it is liable to contradict itself at any point. It is necessarily the least consistent doctrine which it is possible for man to hold. For Nihilism, in the very assertion of itself as a principle, must be annihilating itself. Its self-realization is the act of self-destruction. Some of its fleeting appear- ances we may gaze at for a moment. 1. Its first form was a socialistic Nihilism, whose object was to destroy the existent social order, and upon the ruins to let a society build itself, whose outlines were left exceedingly vague. The immediate object was social destruction, which might be accomplished through the exist- ing government. The Russian State and Social- ism had a very important principle in common, namely absolutism. The Tsar Alexander II., who annihilated serfdom and other social rela- tions, was himself a kind of an imperial Nihilist, who perished at last through Nihilism. Some say that he is the main source of Russian Nihilism; certainly it had its chief develop- SOCIETY. 281 inent durinsr his reiga and brought it to an end. 2. The government of Russia prosecuted the Nihilists bitterly, with the result that the latter turned upon the government and assailed its head in a series of plots and assassinations which have hardly a parallel in history. These horrors in rapid succession sent shiver after shiver through the whole civilized world, and the crack of doom seemed to be heard over Russia. Thus out of the socialistic Nihilism came a national Nihilism which sought particularly the overthrow of Tsar- dom. This very year ( 1901) we read of renewed Nihilistic activity in Russia. 3. Of this national Russian Nihilism has been born a new offspring, which we may call univer- sal Nihilism. It no longer confines itself to Russia, but has propagated itself throughout Europe, and has reached America along with European immigrants. Strangely the Italian seems to be most deeply affected by this kind of Nihilism, and is constituting himself assassin for the world. The Russian is apparently inclined to keep his Nihilism for home use, though he be- comes its missionary to other lands. The great- est apostle of universal Nihilism was a Russian, the famous Bakunin, who spread it among Latin l)eoples, especially among Italians. Though he spurred on many a poor devil to death for the cause, he himself died under shelter, with skin 282 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. whole, at Berne in 1876. Bakunin, too, in early life was a zealous follower of Heo^el, whose nesra- tive side he has carried out more completely than any other disciple, living or dead. The doctrine of Bakunin passed through sev- eral stages, but its culmination is seen in his society called, " The Alliance of Socialist Dem- ocracy," founded in 1869. In its programme this "Alliance declares itself atheistic," as its starting-point; then "all political and author- itative States should disappear," and this is to be accomplished by a "universal revolution, social, philosophical, political, in order that first in Europe and then in the rest of the world there may not remain one stone upon another of the existing order of things." Thus Bakunin has "universalized" his negation, following a well- known Hegelian procedure, of course after his own original fashion, which in this extremity was not known to Hegel. So much for the doctrine ; but what about the organization of the " Alliance?" It was prob- ably the most completely centralized, despotic, freedom-destroying society that was ever con- ceived by the brain of man, with central author- ity ultimately in Bakunin himself, though this may not have been stated. For the society was secret, not only secret to the public but largely secret to the general members, whose chief duty was unquestioning obedience to the command SOCIETY. 288 from an unknown tribunal, communicated by the one authorized person, who himself did not know whence came the command, as it was delivered to him by a third person equally ignorant of its source. But how was this interconnection es- tablished? The workino; method of the organi- zation seems not yet fully known, as the common member is the one who is deputed to do the dan- gerous work, and hence he is the one who gen- erally gets caught. But he properh' knows only of his own little circle of ten, or, if he be its founder, he knows of two circles. Thus, if he confesses, he has not much information to im- part. Herein we come upon a leading object of the central organizization : to secure itself against confession and treachery. Its method proceeds from a universal suspicion of its members, and from their own ignorance and credulity. The central circle (originally of one hundred mem- bers) start other circles, and these still other circles ; all these derived circles have no connec- tion with one another, and need not to know of one another, except in the above-mentioned case of the founder, who is the sole connecting link between two circles. Yet this connecting link is everywhere present, and forms a net-work which joins all the subordinate circles to the central one, from which the secret command can be trans- mitted to every individual nihilist. (See the ac- count in Rae's book, Contemporary Socialism.) 284 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Such is the society which has secretly formed itself within the social order for the purpose of destroying the social order and indeed the whole institutional world. For the Nihilist traces all human ills, moral and physical, to institutions, and so establishes an institution for their de- struction. Herein what we have called Perverted Society has reached its climax and final manifest- ation. Still the Nihilist at times shows signs of trying to go a step farther. Nature has an order, a system of laws ; why should he not become their enemy too? Bakunin speaks of the great end of Nihilism as " universal amorphism," the de- struction of all form, which would seem to involve Nature, who is the great producer of forms. He says that the Nihilist is to study physical science, mechanics, chemistry, engineering, not in order to construct anything but to destroy, apparently to undo Nature herself in an ultimate grand cataclysm, to send this blooming planet whizzing back to chaos, to that nebulous streak in which Laplace saw our globe starting on its career. Then we shall have attained, as nearly as pos- sible, the goal of all true striving, universal amorphism. In such utterances one can hardly help finding traces of disease. Some Russian writers have declared that Nihilism is a mental malady pecu- liar to Russia, a national epidemic of negation, SOCIETY. 285 which has sprung from \^'estern culture takeu up by a people not yet able to assimilate it, and especially from the study of philosophy by minds which could not digest it healthily. The pathol- ogy of Nihilism in general affirms it to be a disease of education, as it has been found quite impos- sible to inoculate the vast multitude of io-norant Russian peasantry with its virus. Their stupidity is said to be the grand bulwark against their becoming " degenerates." Universal Nihilism which has as its object to destroy all institutions, is now commonly known under the name of anarchism. The world of order is reduced to social chaos, the institutional organism is dissolved into its cellular mass of in- dividual units, all in a struggle with one another, for their negative energy is just what they have developed, and is what has brought them to the present pass. Such is the ideal picture of uni- versal negation. But even the Nihilist does not propose to re- main in this state ; he too, when he has destroyed all, is going to turn positive and construct some- thing. But what annihilation can build, has not yet been revealed. Nihilism has never told, or authoritatively tried to tell, what it was going to erect after the grand social catastrophe. Fortunately at this point history comes to the front with its reality, and responds to the pre- ceding downward line of social degeneration by 286 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. showing a continuous upward line of social re- generation. In thought likewise the negative must at last negate itself, which is the very pro- cess of reahzation. Accordingly we must next see our Social Whole, after being driven to the extremity of its descent, wheel about and rise to its present development. III. The Evolution of Society. We have just witnessed the outcome of the negative movement of Society, through which man is reduced to his individual might or com- bines in gangs or hordes for the purpose of de- stroying the Social Whole. Such a condition is something liise what is often called the state of nature, in which every hand is raised against every other hand in the pursuit of physical de- sire. The civilized world is resolved back into barbarism, into pure individualism, in which \io- lence is the law. Such negative forces are at present existent and working in Societ}^ and not infrequently they rise to surface and give everybody a shock at the outlook which they logically involve. We are all compelled to take a peep now and then at the universal cataclysm Avhich seems to be ap- proaching. A strike has sometimes stopped all travel and cut off all the conveniences of life, so that the Social Whole appears to be dissolving into its original atoms. SOCIETY. 287 The atomic man, as he begins to evolve himself into Society, is next to be looked at, in his ascent from his primitive condition. For the Social Whole is found to have an ascending current as well as a descending one ; it has overcome all these negative elements in times past, and has steadily risen to its present development, though some societies have been submerged in the stream, and all societies show tendencies at certain periods to revert to former and lower stages. In fact, there is always in every society an element of re- version or degeneracy, an element which seems unable to take the new step forward, but drops back into a social condition already transcended by the given age. This negative movement we have already beheld in its career downwards till it reaches what we called Perverted Society, in which the social end is destroyed and the social man drops back quite to his starting-point. Here, then, Evolution begins, and is seen mastering step by step the negative stages before mentioned. The Evohition of Society, therefore, is the affirmative answer to the Revolution of Society, that is, the answer to the destructive process tending to its overthrow. Evolution appears to have just come in time to vindicate man and his Institutions, and to restore his faith in his own progress. It is man's return to himself, his restoration out of pessimism, negation, despair. Yet we must see that Evolution is not the whole 288 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. process, but a part thereof; two other stages go before it, of which it is the completion. The Evokition of Society is, accordingly, the third stage of the grand process of social science, being the return out of social negation to the positive principle of Society, which was first un- folded. The reader will keep in mind this pro- cess of the social totality that it be seized not as a lot of chopped up abstractions, but as the liv- ing movement of the subject itself in its creative energy. Furthermore, this process is to be iden- tified with that of the Ego itself, which is here seen producing its social counterpart — the social Ego creating the social Institution. In like manner we have observed this process in the Family, and shall observe it in other In- stitutions. For the Family has also its disinte- grating forces, and it has also the response and counteraction in the Evolution of the Family, which runs parallel with the Evolution of So- ciety. In fact, Society and Family are very closely connected ; in the beginning Society is a Family. Still we must note the distinction which makes them two different Institutions in their develop- ment. The Famihs as already designated, has its ultimate determining end in the reproduction of the Person as a new Free- Will in the world. Society has as its ultimate determining end the satisfaction of wants, or bodily reproductibn. SOCIETY. 289 which is to be accomplished through the Social Whole. The individual in Society, though this be limited to one family, has needs which he is to satisfy only through the Institution, to which, however, he must give back in some form what he takes. Primarily he must give his own (pro- prium, property), for what he receives. Thus it is that Property may be deemed the axis of Society, whose development runs parallel with that of Property. Ownership is what moves through Social Evolution. Is what you have produced yours? Does your individual Will, ex- erting itself in production, receive its equivalent through the existent social order? If it does not, there must be a change, and the result is a development of the Social Institution from its earliest to its latest form. The fact comes out in a surprising way that ownership does not belong to the individual in the beginning, but to the Institution. Pro})erty is held in common, and is employed to supply the common wants. Nor does the man's activity (his Will) belong to himself, but to the Social Whole. But the movement is to make Property individual, to break up social ownership. Then this tendency also falls iuto an excess, so that a movement sets in to limit individual ownership and to return, in part, at least, to the first stage. As just outlined, the Evolution of Society will pass through the following stages: — 19 , 290 SOCIAL INSTITUTIOXS. I. Natural Communism ; Property is held in common, the Individual is immediately united with the Social Whole, to which belongs what he produces and from which he receives what he needs. Here we have social ownership of Prop- erty and indeed of Man. II. Individual Ownership ; this is the stage of separation and division; man separates himself from the thing and makes it his own, individ- ually ; that which was common Property is divided up and assigned to individuals, who are now owners; the land, being just the fixed and stable in its nature, is usuulh^ the last to be divided. The individual, having Property, is mediately connected with the Social Whole, which thereby assumes a different character. Moreover, the individual will not only take his own, but wiU begin to appropriate what belongs to the Social Whole — whence a new movement. III. Civic Communism (^institutional); this will show a return to social or communal owner- ship in things produced by the Social Whole and belonging to it properly rather than to the indi- vidual. It is a resumption of a lapsed proprietary right in the Commnnity, while recognizing fully individual ownership. It may be said that this is the social process which is at the present time going on with greater intensity than any other. Sometimes this last stage is called socialistic, but the term socialism is properly confined to the SOCIETY. 291 scheDie which proposes to take all means of pro- duction for and into the Social Whole, and thus do away with individual ownership. Such a So- ciety has never existed, and there is a Cjuestion if it can exist. But the Community (with its ow^nership in various forms) has alwaj's existed, and is still living and at work in the world. The Evolution of the real historic Conmiunity is what we shall consider in the following account. A remark about the terms here used. The words communism, communal, commune we employ as correlatives with CommunUy, the real existent one, without reference to any so-called communistic scheme, which has already been treated under the head of Communistic Social- ism. Civic Communism is through the Law and Institution, hence is consciously institutional, whereas Natural Communism is rather instinct- ively institutional, arising, as w^e often sa}'-, by Nature. But it is to be observed that both are institutional, the one being civic or civilized, the other being the undeveloped form of the Com- munity. Modern investigation has busied itself a o-ood deal with the early forms of Society, and has unfolded their character and purpose with much success, though not a little remains to be done. Particularly the so-called Village Communities have attracted attention. They have been found in their primordial activity throughout many 292 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. countries, and numerous modern usages, espe- cially in regard to the tenure of land, have been traced back to these primitive social arrange- ments. Such studies into the origin of Society spring from a deep spiritual need of our time. The extreme ends of the o^reat Arvan mio-ration last- ing thousands of years, Ireland and India, are found to be united not only in a common ances- tral speech, but in common early Institutions and Laws. It seems to be the function of England, which belongs to the same Aryan stock, to bring together these two extremities, not only by exter- nal rule, but by fostering the inner bond of kin- ship. Says Sir Henry Maine (^Early History of Institutions, -g. 18): "I, myself, believe that the government of India by the English has been rendered appreciably easier by the discoveries which have brought home to the educated of both races the common Aryan parentage of English- man and Hindoo." Let us now seek to bring out more decidedly the preceding process by an ordering of the sig- nificant facts which belong to its various stages. I. Natural Communism. There are instances of the Communism of Nature in the lower ani- mals and even in the insects. The bee toils for the hive and not for itself directly ; it does not immediately consume the sweets which it gathers by its industry, but carries them to the common SOCIETY. 293 store. Its instinct is communal rather than in- dividualistic, whereof other instances can be shown throughout Nature. Passing at once to man, we find that in his early condition he also shows a communal in- stinct, as it were ; he toils for some kind of society, and thus begins to show himself institu- tional. He has desire, but that desire is, in its chief manifestations, to be gratified not individ- ually but through the community. He has no ownership at first in what he produces ; Property does not belong to him at the start, though he begins slowly to get something which he calls his own. Thus we behold Communism as the social starting-point of man. We call it natural as seems given by Nature herself; the individual acts in this matter instinctively, not consciously, or not in any large degree is he conscious ; he is carrying out the promptings of his Nature. The members of such a community are primarily connected by blood, a natural tie; they belong nowhere else, and if they quit it, they are out- casts. They cannot change societies or even localities without losinor their fundamental insti- tutional relation, they are rooted to the spot, to the soil, they are in the vegetative period of Society. Accordingly in Natural Communism the Insti- tution not only owns the Proporty but owns the 294 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. man, he is absorbed in his Community. He is not free, nor does the Institution will his free- dom, except in a very primitive degree. The result is, a process sets in toward the great end of humanity, whose destiny is to become free. Natural Communism will pass through three main stashes in which it is seen o-ettins: rid of itself and movino; into a hio;her social form. 1. T7ie Family Community. Or, we might say, the Family regarded as a Community, looked at specially on its social side, not on its domes- tic, though the two sides are not wholly sepa- rable. The Family is the primordial unit, the institutional cell from which other Institutions spring ; they all seem to be implicit in the Family orioinally. The members of the Family Commuuity are, first of all, closely united by blood, being the descendants of a known ancestor, often alive and present. In its simplest form we may conceive of it as composed of grandparents, their children and their grandchildren. It has a common dwell- ing, common table ; the work of each individual is for the whole and he obtains his necessaries of life throuo^h the whole. Both land and mov- ables are held in common, the Property belongs to the Family Commuuity. Still even here there comes to be a slight indi- vidual ownership. Each person must have some thino-s as his own. oarments are not whollv held SOCIETY. 295 in common. There is a small sphere for pres- ents which arc in their very nature personal. Such a Family Community is seen everywhere to-day. But in modern Society it begins to dis- solve when the children are of asie or can take care of themselves ; with the death of the parents the Family splits up into its individual units, and the property is divided. But in early Society this process does not take place. The grandfathers pass away, still the blood-tie remains, and the descendants hold to- gether. There is the common hearth, the com- mon worship, the common ancestor, though the families increase. Thus a group of families ad- here together round a common center, quite unable to sever the original domestic bond and to declare their independence. Still there grows up a difference from the sim- ple Family Community, which gives to this new Community a character of its own. The group of families, though held together by the domestic bond, must begin to show its own distinct org-ani- zation, and so we come to the followinof social form. 2. The House Community. This form or stage of social development is found among all peoples; in general, the various branches of the Aryan race have passed and are still passing through it from India to Europe. Particularly the Slavonic House Communit}'' has attracted 296 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. attention in recent years and has often been described. There is, first of all, the idea of kin- ship, the natural tie of blood; all the members are supposed to be derived from a common an- cestor. They have the one house or group of houses in the same inclosure, which is fenced off, or palisaded, or surrounded with trees. They labor in common and enjoy the produce of the soil in common. They have the common meal in the large room of the house. The sep- arate couples have their own apartments, or often they house themselves in small independ- ent buildings within the general inclosure. Of course there is no community of wives ; it is a social community, common effort, common prop- erty, common enjoyment of this effort and its property. One of the distinctive things in the House Community is the rise of the political element, showing a certain Democratic tendency. Every man has a voice in the conduct of affairs. The little assembly meets every day and deliberates, generally in the evening when the day's work is done, seated under a tree in the inclosure. The House Communit}^ varies much in size ; it may rise to sixty or seventy persons, or drop down to ten or a dozen. Here lies a chief distinction between the simple Family Community, which was despotic, ruled by the living father, as patri- arch, and the House Communitv, which has no SOCIETY. 297 such living patriarch but has the need and tend- ency to rule itself. Still there must be a chief or head of this primitive government, who, however, is elected bj the members. He does the business of the Community and stands for it to the outside world. The women also have their head or house-mother with her sphere of control over the females of the community. Such is the primitive form of the House Community in which we may see the germ of im- portant poHtical institutions which civilization has developed. Here is a legislative power, here is also the executive power, distinct, yet correlated. Here, too, is that social feeling which works for all, for the community, and not for the Self by itself. It is the primitive training of man as a social being, it disciplines him out of immediate gratification, out of selfish anti-social desire. Of course there are many kinds and many stages of these House Communities. Sir Henry Maine has identified them with the Hindoo Joint Family, which has existed down to the present, through all sorts of conquests and revolutions that have swept over India for thousands of years. M. de Lavelcye (in his work on Primitive Prop- erty) has traced it in nearly every country on the globe, and found it among peoples out of whose midst it wa3 supposed to have vanished long ago. The House Community may, therefore, be said 2'J8 social institutions. to represent a universal stage of the social de- velopment of the race. We can see the needful social discipline which it gives to selfish human nature. But like all other stages of society, its function is to develop man bej'ond itself; he, the limit-transcending, is not to stay forever crystal- lized in the routine of such a primitive social organization. It trains him to an institutional life, but does not unfold him into freedom and universality. It gets to be narrowing, confining, enslaving, and the human spirit must transcend it and move forward into a new and freer institu- tional form. Sometimes the House Community dissolves into its family units ; this is a case of reversion to a previous stage (the Family Community) and has been noticed to take place frequently in India. But the true evolution of the House Community is into the Village Community, which has in recent times attracted the attention of ob- servers more than even the House Community. 3. The Village Community. The blood-tie which was the strong natural bond in both the Family and the House Communities, now recedes into the background, even if it does not wholly disappear. Not the Community based on birth but on land becomes the central fact in the vil- laofe, which is the new social unit before us. Strangers in blood can now be members of the Communitv, though their admission be difficult. SOCIETY. 299 The domestic element of kinship is thus quite eliminated, and the social element of property, specially property in land, is the pivotal fact. Still the Village Community is made up of Families not now joined together in the House Community, but rather the Family Community is the constituent. Thus we see a return to the first stage but not a relapse, inasmuch as the Family Community has become an element of a new and higher institutional form, though in its own sphere it is independent and governed ab- solutely by its head. The Village Community is the third and last stage of Natural Communism, since Nature, the soil, furnishes the communal bond uniting its members. Scattered up and down the earth are many varieties of the Village Community, in many stages of development and decay ; they have been traced among the Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian races, but amid all differences the essential out- lines are the same. The Village Community is dealing everywhere with the land question ; man has passed, or at least is passing, completely out of his pastoral life into his fixed abode as a cul- tivator of the soil. Shall he own it or shall it own him, or determine his existence? Certainly it settles him, fastening him to one spot and into one social form. Thus the Village Community will show an inner struggle, which is at bottom that same old struggle for freedom. 300 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. In regard to property a distinction has arisen — the movables belong to the individual or to the separate families now, not to the Community. In this way a considerable sphere of private owner- ship has shown itself, indicative of the tendency of things. The members are getting used to having their own possessions ; property individ- ualized is becoming an important fact, a grow- ing consciousness. The land belonging to the Village Community is usually divided into three portions : the arable part, the pasture, and the waste or forest. The Swiss villagers, speaking of their land (AII- mend) say : FeJd, Weide, Wald. The arable part is still further divided into lots, of which each family obtains one for cultivation. The pasture is also divided into lots and assigned to the members of the Community, but the waste or unused portion is held in common. Sometimes there is no partitipn of the soil, but it is cultivated in common, and the produce divided. Then again there is a permanent appor- tionment of certain parts, while other parts are held in common. More often the lots are kept by the same person for a term of years when there is a new distribution. Such a Community has a good deal of business to transact and in- ternal matters to settle, such as the time and manner of partition, the periods of sowing and harvesting, etc. This is done by the assembly SOCIETT. 801 of which all the men are members. Yet here too one may find every gradation between democ- racy and aristocracy. Perhaps the most interesting of all the forms of the Village Community is that known in Russia, called the mir. It is a surprising fact that this system of communism prevails throughout the largest country of Europe among its agricul- tural population. And it is Natural Communism, a growth of Nature, as it were, a sponta- neous product of the social man. This mir is the institutional unit of the vast Russian Em- pire. It alone is the proprietor of the soil of which the individual member has only the use, but docs not possess. It is responsible to the lord for rent, to the government for taxes, and for so many soldiers; otherwise it is a self-gov- erning, independent unit, endowed with an enor- mous vitality, truly the Russian monad or indestructible atom. Other Village Communities have dissolved, and are now dissolving, but the Russian mir, recognized and confirmed by the government in its autonomy, seems more stable than ever. It has resisted all attempts to make land ownership individual, and thus stands in marked contrast to Western Europe, and, on the other hand, it has resisted Nihilism, being the bulwark of the Russian Empire. It has been much discussed whether the mir is an advantage or a drawback to Russia. The Rus- 302 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. sians themselves are much divided on the ques- tion (see M. de Laveleye's work on Primitive Property, Chap. II. and III.). It doubtless re- tards agriculture, but it prevents pauperism, and maintains social equality. It has met with great favor in the school of social democrats, such as Herzen and Bakunin . On the other hand the upper classes of Russia are said to be hostile to the mir, deeming it to be that element of the social order which keeps Russia in a backward con- dition. It is interesting to note that there is one little corner of Western Europe in which the Village Community has maintained itself down to the present time. In the Forest Cantons of Switzer- land there is still the social unit which retains almost unimpaired communal autonomy and com- munal property. The one confers upon the hardy mountaineers their political freedom, the other their social equality. But here, too, the principle of the Village Community is being stoutly assailed, and will probably vanish with time. In Germam^ France, England, Ireland the former existence of the Village Community has been brought to light by investigators. This institutional form may be said to be a universal stage through which quite every society has to pass in its development. In China, Java, India, America it has been pointed out as well as in SOCIETY. 808 Europe ; the counlTies of classical antiquity man- ifest the same social phenomenon. Still the Village Community shows itself to be a transitional stage in the Evolution of Society. Individual ownership rises against it and in the most advanced nations of the world puts it down. At a certain period of its growth it begins to clog the full, free development of the individual in his march toward institutional freedom. It binds him to the soil, it makes a physical object his controller, his determinant. In the Vil- lage Community man has not yet quite severed the umbilical cord which ties him to Mother Nature. The operation may be painful, but it has to be done if the human being is ever to be a free, self-active, self- determined personality. Such is the sphere of Natural Communism with its three prominent stages, which are not simply successive in time, but are usually in a process with one another, and of this process there are many gradations. For instance, the South Slavo- nians (in Turkey and Austria) are said by Sir Henry Maine {Early Law and Custom, Chap. VIII.) to have developed specially the House Community, but not the Village Community to any extent, while the North Slavonians (Russia) have developed the Village Communitj^ but not the House Community. In Hindostan, however, and in other countries, both the House and the 804 aOOIAL INSTITUTIONS. Village Communities are present together in the same province or nation. In social embryology, it is often a disputed question just what form is the starting-point. If the Village Community is taken as the social cell, as many do, then the Family Community must be regarded as the nucleus of the cell. The social unit will have its organization and process, and perhaps it is better to consider the entire movement of what we have termed Natural Com- munism as the originative principle of society when man has settled down to till the earth and to become institutional. The three stashes in the movement of Natural Communism, we may here briefly recapitulate. The Family Community has everything in com- mon along with absolute authority in the father or patriarch. The House Community has all property in common and is composed of joint Families, though with a certain separative ten- dency, while self-government begins to show itself in the assembly for deliberation. The Village Community does not insist on the blood-tie, and has the tendency to give up the movables to separate ovi^nership, while the land remains col- lective property. Moreover the political organi- zation of the Village Community develops quite fully, showing dehberative, executive, and judicial functions, usually with leanings toward democratic forms of procedure. so C IE TV. 305 The next great fact we observe is the gradual breaking-up and submergence of the Village Community among peoples of advancing civiliza- tion. Its foundation stone, the common property in land, is undermined, and a new social order takes its place. This is what we shall next con- sider. II. Individual Ownership. This is now to become general and is specially to be applied to land, which is the last to yield itself up to be the Person's own (ownership). The soil being im- movable is the least tractable to man's complete possession. The earth for a long time asserts that it owns the man, but man has finally to assert that he owns the earth. In the movement toward freedom Property has to be individual- ized, the personal Will must make itself real in the land as well as in the thing. The cosmos itself has to go through the crucible of the indi- vidual Ego, ere the latter can know itself as free. Already such a tendency was manifest in the movement of Natural Communism, as just shown. It may be declared that the destiny of all exter- nality is that it be made internal, be made some- body's own. On the other hand, it is just as necessary that the internal element, the Ego, bo externalized, be made a reality which it is in Propert}^ though we would all say that Property is not the highest realization of human spirit. Many have praised the Village Community as 20 306 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. the truly free Society, and have sought to return to it as to the primitive paradise of liberty. But we have already seen it is not free except in a very limited backward sense. It is exclusive, and can becojne very despotic (the reproach often cast upon the Kussian mir), and is not universally human, which is the requirement of freedom in these days ; it is an institutional form which does not will Free-Will absolutely, but conditionally, within its own confines and not always there. Individual Ownership is the stage of separation from the immediate communal life, and the divi- sion of the common property belonging to the commune. The land is now assigned to the in- dividual as his own, instead of his beino- assio^ned to the land by the communHy. The " shifting severalties," so well known in English law, and characteristic of the early Village Community, have ceased, which means that the center has moved from the land to the individual, who is no longer shifted about from one piece of ground to another, but is himself the determining principle of the soil. "We may make a comparison between this change and the change from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican theory, in which the human mind passed from regarding the earth as the cen- ter of the Solar Svstem and took the sun as that center. In like manner we may deem Natural Communism to be geocentric, till individual own- t^OCIETY. 307 cislii}) breaks it up and places the deteniiiuing point in the human Ego, which thu? becomes analogically heliocentric. Still Individual Ownership is not the finality ; it will show limitation, and will develop an excess which will call forth a new institutional form for the purpose of curbing its destructive tendencies. Individualism with its unbridled self-appropria- tion evokes mightier negative forces in Society than simple Natural Communism, which after all is a rather innocent paradisaical thing, suitable to the needs of a primitive agricultural community. The transition to Individual Ownership of the soil out of earlier social forms has been an ex- ceedingly long and slow one, with many varia- tions in different parts of the globe. Here we can only notice three stages in the historical movement of Europe, which show a connected development in this field from antiquity down to the present. 1. Classical Antiquitij. In both Greece and Home there are many evidences of a period of Natural Communism antecedent to the historical period of Individual Ownership, as it is known to us in ancient literature. In fact, Natural Com- munism leaves little or no written record of itself ; its documents are chiefly tradition, it is incon- sistent with letters and with education, which de- velop the individual. Already in Homer we see that land is not common; the village of Ithaca 308 SOCIAL IX.STITUTIONS. has nothing to do whh the estate of Ulysses^ which is despoiled by the suitors ; it is wholly his private property. Far otherwise would the situ- ation have been if Ithaca had been a Village Com- munity with soil undivided. Still Greek legend has not let the earlier period die, but has transmitted fair pictures of the Golden Age, Avhen lands were common and undivided, when the earth brought forth her fruits for all equally. This was during the an- cient rule of Saturn, before the advent of Jupiter and the new Gods with their new order. So all classic literature from Hesiod down looked back upon a past blissful epoch when there was neither wealth nor poverty, because there Avas no such thing as ownership. Particularly Virgil and the later Roman poets sang of that antique time with a melancholy longing, and hoped for and could even prophesy its return, oppressed as they were with the bitter conflict between the rich and the poor, which was the destructive canker of their age. Another striking; fact lookino; in the same direc- tion is found in Plato, who sought to reconstruct the institutions of his time, especially in his Hepublic and in his Laivs. In both these Avorks are many social arrangements which strikingly recall Natural Communism, and leave little doubt that Plato drew upon the reality for his sugges- tions in numerous instances. That reality was SOCIETY. 30y both past and present; he had only to look at the rustic outlying backward communities of Hellas in his own time to see what had been the past of Athens. The Republic of Plato is usually supposed to be an ideal product of his iraao-iiiation, but it is a looking; backward more than a looking forward, a return to the old more than a construction of the new. Moreover, history has a word to say in this matter, though not as certain as it might be. There is a o-eneral statement amons; Greek writers that Theseus, the supreme Athenian hero, unified Attica. What does this mean? Before his time the country was split up into a number of inde- pendent families and clans; he brought them under one government and founded the greatness of Athens. There can be little doubt that this signifies the transition out of the House Com- munity and the Village Community into the City proper, which becomes the center of ancient civ- ilization. In like manner Rome was formed by the coalescence of several Village Communities, which was the work of its heroic founder. Thus the ancient City is an evolution out of the Village Community, Avhich thereby loses its essen- tial characteristic, common property in land. But a new conflict takes its place — the struggle of the rightlcss for rights, of the Plebs versus the Patricians, of the Demus versus the Eupatrids. The result is the triuin[)h of the popuhirside; olO SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. not only is individual property acknowledged, but individual right also ; universal citizenship was proclaimed at Rome about the time of the em- peror Caracalla. 2. Feudalism. In the vast Roman Empire individual ownership of land had worked itself out to its extreme negative conclusion. A few proprietors owned substantially the soil of Italy which was cultivated by slaves mainly. The in- dependent cultivator of the land, who owned himself and the ground he tilled, had quite dis- appeared, and with him the Roman conqueror of the World. The body of the people, through the operation of individual ownership in land, had lost all ownership in land. Such was the general situation when a new order began to appear. The Northern Barba- rians, mostly of Teutonic descent, came down upon the Roman Empire and conquered it, for it was already conquered internally. Where were its defenders? Certainly the masses could not be interested in the maintenance of such a social system. Now these Northern Peoples brought with them into the conquered lands, their own supreme social institution which was the Teutonic Mark, or the Village Community. These Teutons were Aryans, and they had this old Aryan institution, which still maintained a certain form of common ownership of land, and which we have already SOCIETY. 311 seen to be the early social principle of both Greece and Rome. Thus civilized antiquity, after the development of a thousand years, is whirled back to its beginning and compelled to take a fresh dip into the fountain-head of its own institutional origin. The Teutonic conquerors were quite in the condition of Attica in the time of Theseus and of Rome in the time of Romulus. So we may say that the Village Community after being conquered and suppressed by Individual Ownership in land, rises and conquers in turn. The result, however, will be not destruction, but a coalescence and intersjrowth of the two principles which will give rise to what is known as Feudalism. Again land will determine the man, his social and political status, and yet it will not be held in common. The Feudal Sys- tem will have both Roman and Teutonic ele- ments, it will be a commiuglino; of individualistic and communistic principles. The ownership of land will vest in an individual, not in a commun- ity ; yet the owner, just through his tenure of the land, is bound to certain services and takes a certain social position. These services, again, belong not to the community but to an indi- vidual, to the lord paramount. Thus the com- mon land of the Village Community was subjected to individual ownership, and indi- vidual ownership of land in turn was sub- jected to a superior or a series of superiors 312 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. culminating in the king, who was liimself subjected to the System. The result was that society was composed of a succession of layers, one over the other from bottom to top, the prin- ciple of stratification being the tenure of land, which became of many kinds. The conquest of the Eoman Empire by the Germanic tribes was not a mere predatory incur- sion of a barbarous horde, but it was a great migration of peoples who took with them their wives and little ones, their herds, household goods and gods, as well as their weapons; espe- cially did they carry along, for they could not help it, their social and political organization, which they superposed upon the old civilization of the conquered territory. That civilization had held sway for a thousand years, speaking in round numbers. This new system of Feudalism is to develop and rule in Europe for another thousand years, speaking in round numbers (very round in this case). The characteristic of Feudalism is the social and political separation of men and their division into classes whose rank is determined by some- thing external, b}^ the way they hold their land. Yet it is undeniable that the Feudal System was a necessity of the time, it did its part toward saving ancient civilization, which it rejuvenated socially by engrafting upon it the Village Com- munity, an Institution belonging to the youth of SOCIETY. 313 society. It is tlie custom in some quarters to abuse Feudalism, and it is superannuated for the advanced nations of the world ; still it should be appreciated in the great historic succession of social Institutions. We must, however, see that the Feudal System at last becomes hostile to freedom and progress. The rise of the Free Cities was an important step beyond Feudalism, and it cannot endure the modern industrial spirit. But its most terrible trial, the most furiouslj^ vindictive blow that it or any Institution ever received may be noticed. 3. Tlte French Revolution, Innumerable causes have been assigned for the French Revolution, but Feudalism is seldom omitted from their num- ber, though given different degrees of importance. The peasantry which cultivated the soil of France sought to get rid of the feudal dues which they were compelled to pay to the nobility through the tenure of land. This tenure was mainly what is known in English Law as Copyhold, hence a dis- tinguished English lawyer declares that "the French Revolution took place because a great part of the soil of France was held on a Copyhold Tenure." Already we have noticed that the Feudal Sys- tem sprang from the Teutonic Mark or Village Community beingtransformed through Individual Ownership into the medieval Manor or Fief with its personal service on the one side, and its indi- 314 80UIAL INSTITUTIONS. vidual tenure of the land on the other. It is well known that the Roman Law greatly assisted the barbarous conquerors of the Roman Empire to bring; about this transformation, throuoh its insistence upon the right of private property. The stress given to Individual Ownership is felt in those two words of the Roman Law, suiim cidque, w^hich have been sometimes declared to contain its essence. Now it is this personal ser- vice in the form of feudal dues connected with the cultivation of the soil which the French Revolu- tion smote with such unparalleled vengeance . For it was not sated till the noblesse who held these feudal claims were not only deprived of them but were driven from France or done to death by the guillotine. The Revolution was not a Parisian aifair merely, as it seems on its face; its flames were fed by the peasants who never stopped till they made their land free of its feudal burdens. Throughout the greater part of rural France the skies were red with burning castles and mansions of nobles to which the peasantry set fire in order to consume, it is said by historians, the titles and other evidences of feudal claims upon the soil. The same change took place in other countries, but without such a tremendous explosion. It took place in England quite gradually and peace- fully. Sir Henry Maine has devoted an interest- ing Chapter {Early Law and Custom, C. IX.) to showing why the abolition of the same kind SOCIETY. 315 of land tenure (the Copyhold) produced a rev- olution in France and no disturbance at all in England. The result, however, was the same in both countries, the practical end of Feudalism. Thus modern civilization has returned to com- plete Individual Ownership in land, such as we noted in ancient civilization. Greece and Rome are much nearer to us socially than our own Teutonic ancestors with their Mark, even nearer to us than the Feudal Ages with their peculiar social system. The Renascence made us acquain- ted with the classic world in its literary, artistic, and also political aspects. But only in recent years do we seem to know Greece and Rome sociaUv ; thus modernity and antiquity are shaking- hands across the centuries with a fresh and deeper acquaintance. Still the other element has not been inactive. France in particular has been prolific of com- munistic schemes since the Revolution, which fact indicates a strong reaction in many minds against the excessive individualism of that event . Thus we see likewise a return to early com- munism, modified of course to suit modern con- ditions. So vital and perdurable is that primor- dial social cell of tlie human race, the Village Community : we behold it rising and reproducing itself, ideally if not really, in the very heart of modern civilization. It has not yet come as ;i conqueror as it did to the Roman Empire, nor 316 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Avill it probably; but it has doubtless still a part to play in social development. III. Civic Communism. Our age is the bloom of Individual Ownership in land and in all other things. The exploitation of the personal factor of humanity is the fact and probably the vocation of our era. The old world has broken or is breaking down the barriers to specialized posses- sion of the soil by man, and the new world has never allowed them to be put up. The result is a marvelous conquest of whole continents through individual energy, primarily seen in agriculture, then in the means of transportation and inter- communication (railroad, telegraph, etc.), then in commercial and industrial expansion. Moreover all political discrimination against the individual is substantially broken down. Equality before law is the universal law of the new civilization ; equal opportunity for every man is secured as far as the State can secure it, and political power is largely put into the hands of the people. The age of the political tyrant seems to be quite past ; we read of him. in ancient and medieval historj', when he was often a success, that is, a natural outgrowth of the time, and often doubtless a blessing. Still, along with this political equality has risen a social inequality — the inequality in the owner- ship of property — which, if not already, soon will be, the greatest that ever existed in any time SOCIETY. 317 or country. The individuiil, turned loose into :i free world and permitted to the fullest extent to realize his capacity or incapacity, especially in the matter of acquiring wealth, will show every grade of inequality from the slum-dweller to the billionaire. Not society but the free-acting Self is what creates the unequal distribution of prop- erty, at least this is its primary source. The present fact, which is fundamental, we may unfold a little. First of all, there is a dif- ference in talent, which is sure to reflect itself in what each person produces. One man has great power of combination and foresight, another has almost none. In truth, the chief cause of pov- erty is improvidence, a personal, not a social matter. In the second place there is the diiference in education, which also tells greatly upon the value of effort. Hence the School is the grand social equalizer, created and main- tained by Society, to level as far as possible all inequality. In the third place there is the differ- ence in aim and ambition, when talent and edu- cation may be quite the same, and this too produces inequality of wealth. Of two men equally gifted by nature, and equally educated, one may have the ambition to be a money-getter, and the other to be a schoolmaster. It is not the fault of the social system if, after twenty years' time, the one is rich and the other poor. Each has gotten his own, the result of his own 318 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. choice, the fruits of his own Tocation. The one has spent his days upon man-building, the other upon fortune-building ; each has attained within limits his end, and that is his reward. -Any in- terference with this result, any transfer of the reward of the one to the other from the outside is a violation of personal liberty. Thus the world of individuals endowed with equal opportunity and political equality, is bound to bring forth the most complete social inequalit}^ just through individual freedom. Each indi- vidual must be allowed to unfold his own self- hood, expressing it in the acquisition of property as in other things ; hence the inequality in wealth and in other things, such as knowledge and wisdom. At this point we may see the chief mistake of the majority of social reformers. They leave out or discredit the subjective factor ; they seem to think that every man is made after the one pat- tern, that all are the same in natural ability, education and ambition, not to speak of other differences. They look into dark corners and behold wretched poverty ; at once they begin an onslaught upon society in which such a thing can occur and never think to inquire : Is or is not this miserable condition the result of man's own free act? Shall we take away his freedom and com- pel him not to be poor? Political liberty and equality lead to social inequality, for they bring SOCIETY. 319 to the surface jiiid make valid all the diverse phases of individuality. The incapable must show their incapacity just as brilliantly as the capable show their capacity ; in this respect free- dom is far more remorseless than paternalism. When we find an institution which can bring us equality of talent or of wisdom, then we can have equality of wealth or at least its equivalent. The difficulty, then, is primarily not social, but psy- chical. The reformer is inclined to flatter pov- erty, making it believe that it has had no hand in its own existence, but that this is caused by society or possibly by the rich man. Our time has witnessed the flowering of what may be called social demagoguery, the counterpart of political demagoguery, which is still alive but seems not so flourishing as it once was. But now for the other side. There is no doubt that wealth can become and does become grasp- ing, tyrannical, negative to the very social order whence it sprang. The free individual, unfold- ing through his freedoui and amassing vast prop- erties can and does use them not infrequently to the detriment of the freedom of others. At this point Individual Ownership has become self-de- structive; the free individual, in the untram- meled pursuit of private gain, uses the liberty which he has enjoyed and employed, to assail and destroy that same liberty in others. That is, Free-Will, instead of securing Free- Will, has 320 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. become negative to Free-Will and thus is anti- institutional. For, as we may recollect, the pos- itive Institution is actualized Free-Will, which returns and secures itself. Thus Individual Ownership must be followed or transformed and corrected by another insti- tutional form which we have here called Civic Communism. We observe that this is in one way a return to Communism, yet not to Natural Communism. The Community must again hold property, especially must it take possession of its own property, determining slowly, carefully, justly what is its own property. For the free Individual in exploiting his freedom of acquisi- tion, has also appropriated the Community's wealth. Still Individual Ownership in its right- ful sphere is not to be jeoparded, but is to be the more carefully confirmed and secured because of this limitation put upon it in new social arrange- ments. But where it has become destructive of freedom, and indeed self -destructive, it must be saved from itself. The use of the word Communism in the pres- ent connection is to be attentively observed. It does not mean Communism of wives or of goods, to which it is often applied ; nor does it mean Communism of land. Its root lies in the Civil Community, in the town, city. State; hence we call it Civic Communism, signifying that the said Civil Community holds its own property for the SOCIETY. 321 benefit of all its members. Thus there is com- munal property, but just as well individual prop- erty. One of the leading social questions of the time, if not absolutely the one great question, pertains to this resumption of communal ownership. It is deeply fermenting in the spirit of the age, and is showing itself under many diverse forms, chiefly in the way of theory, not, however, with- out taking certain practical shapes. Civic Com- munism is gradually crystallizing itself; we may here designate certain general phases which have already manifested themselves in its process. 1. There are writers of power and influence who advocate a return to the Village Community with its reservation of communal land. These writers cannot endure the thought of inequal- ity in property which they deem the Satanic destroyer of all happiness and of modern civiliza- tion. Hence they advise flight — rapid flight back to that primitive Eden, the Village Com- munity, which man has lost through the insidious intrusion of the serpent. Individual Ownership in land. Undoubtedly in such a return, there must be some alterations of the original Eden, there must be some adjustment to the new-comers who cannot be expected to throw off at once their civil- ized hal>its and the inherited ideas of centuries. The most interesting and instructive of these writers, as far as we have read, is M. Emile de 21 322 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Laveleje in his book on Primitiv(^ Property, pub- lished some twenty years ago. Says he: "In every commune a portion of territorj'^ should be reserved and divided in temporary possession among all the families, as is done in the forest cantons of Switzerland." He advises the new communities forming in America and Australia to shun Individual Ownership in land, " the strict and severe right of property borrowed from Eome," in order to avoid the evils of feudalism, absolutism, and demagogueism. He can only see the destruction of liberty, if social inequality is allowed to continue, and through his whole book runs an elegiac undertone of melancholy regret as he looks back from modern civilization to the Village Community which forms the main subject of his work. M. de Laveleye takes the old Teutonic Mark in its Swiss form, as the social unit to which we should return, of course with certain modifications. Other writers have bid us look to the Slavo- nic Village Community as the healing principle of the social ills of "Western civilization. Not a few Russian writers maintain that the Slavonic race is to be the new regenerator of Europe. As the Germanic tribes came down upon effete antiquity, and rejuvenated it with the Teutonic Mark, so Russia with its mir is to perform a like work for the modern world. Back we must go again to the social beginnings of man for a fresh plunge SOCIETY. 323 into the fountain of youth, this time the Shivonic fountain. The future of Europe belongs to us, says Pan-Slavism. I do not know whether anybody has suggested that we push still further to the East, and try the Hindoo Village Community as the remedial source of our social woes. Some Western folks are re- turning to India for their religion, for Buddhism and for Theosophy. Some others may be in- clined to go thither for their social institutions. There is great difficulty in adopting the Vil- lage Community in any form. Its people have essentially but one vocation, that of agriculture. A few artisans may exist among them, but no diversified industry. Modern society calls forth many vocations and develops many talents be- sides that of tilling the soil and simple artisan- ship. Still we must not underrate this thought of man's returning upon himself and beginning over again at the social starting-point, when he thinks he has gone wrong, and we may well take a lesson from the persistence of that original unit of human association, the Village Community, and its power of rising and reproducing itself in men's souls after centuries of suspended activity. I do not look upon these ideal schemes as mean- ingless, they are deeply hintful, and show the leaven that is working in the time, being prog- nostications of the coming order. Modern society, turned back into the Village 324 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. Comniimity, however widened the latter may be for its reception, would have to give up its prin- ciple of individual exploitation ; the grand diver- sity of talent and vocation Avould have to be somehow leveled down if not destroyed. The just freedom of the individual would certainly suffer in any such process — at least that free- dom as conceived by Anglo-Saxon peoples. Hence these have had their own prophet in the present sphere. 2. The dualism between the individual and the community is now to be fully acknowledged, and each is to be assigned to its own realm where it is to be granted everything that rightfully be- longs to it. Thus what we have called Civic Communism assumes a new phase in the move- ment of social reform; the Civil Community (town, city, State) is not only to own but also to take back all property in land, to resume the ownership of the soil, Avhich it had in the Village Community, and of other values quite unknown to primitive society. On the other hand the in- dividual is to be left as free as ev^er (unless in- deed he be a landholder) ; in fact, he is to be liberated from certain burdens which encumber his present activity, for instance taxation. Many thinkers have pointed out the diiference between property in land, which is not the product of man's will, and property in other things which are products of man's will. John Stuajt Mill SOCIETY. 325 more than questions the right of private owner- ship in the soil, and Herbert Spencer assails it strongl}^ in his Social Statics. But the man who above all others has enforced this phase of Civic Communism is Hemy George. He gave his life to its propagation ; his books tell it to the peo- ple, w^ho have read them throughout the English- speaking world. To him chiefly must be ascribed the fact that modern communal ownership, as just described, has become a permanent part of Anglo-Saxon consciousness, which, as yet sub- jective and internally fermenting, has neverthe- less begun slowly but very perceptibly to realize itself in new forms of Civic Communism. George's scheme has difficulties which render it impossible to be adopted ; at certain points it violates established riffhts to such a deg-ree that it becomes repugnant to the sense of justice in most men. At the same time it shows forth with convincing clearness and emphasis the proprietary right of the Civil Community upon which Indi- vidual Ownership has encroached to the injury of society and to the detriment of individual free- dom. Thus George's doctrine has, as is usually the case, both a positive and a negative element, and therein becomes contradictory and self- destructive ; in one part it assails established right in order to establish right in another part, both parts belonging to the social system. So the question rises whether this negative 326 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. element can be eliminated or corrected, and the positive element introduced into the social move- ment without violatino; vested rights. This brings up a new and indeed the latest phase of Social Evolution, to which as the final outlook upon the future a few words may be given. 3. The communal Will is not to despoil the individual Will, nor is the individual Will to despoil the communal Will; both are integral elements of the social order, and each is not only to allow passively the other to exist, but is pos- itively to secure this existence. No spoliation of the individual by the community or of the com- munity by the individual; on the contrary, each is directly to protect and to promote the other. Or, to express this thought psychologically, the two Wills, the communal and the personal, the universal and the individual, are to will each other and thus make themselves truly institu- tional. So the man becomes on his side ethical, he wills actualized Free-Will, which is the in- stitution, the community, while the latter on its side returns to him and secures his Free-AVill. All this has reference here to property, which is a realization of Will, be it communal or personal. Such is the general principle, which has, how- ever, quite a distance to travel, before it can become the complete fact. The increased value of the soil and of other things, which results from coininunal activity, should belong to the SOCIETY. 327 commuuity, which ought not to be despoiled of it by the individual, as is too often the case. Fran- chises which are really a form of communal prop- erty should not be disposed of to private parties without adequate compensation to the community, their owner. One may well ask what has caused the com- munity thus to abandon its ownership, which in former times was acknowledged and defended in law. There can be hardly a doubt that it is one pernicious result of the doctrine of laissez-faire which permeated Europe in recent times. The legislative theory of Bentham, which has had great influence throughout all Anglo-Saxondom, throws quite everything to the individual, and hamstrings the commuuity as owner. Undoubt- edly this kind of legislation has had its important work to perform in delivering the individual from former legal restrictions placed on his freedom. Among; other thino;s it has secured religious toler- ation and economic liberty by wiping out old ecclesiastical and sumptuary laws. But in order to serve personal freedom, it has announced the universal doctrine of non-interference with the individual ; the State is to do nothing, its attitude toward the economic world must be largely pas- sive. Thus the communal Will as manifested in town, city, State, was shoved into the back- ground by the thinker, by the legislator, and by public ()])inion, whil(^ the individunl AVill, turned 828 SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. loose in anew world, reared among other wonders the colossal structure of modern industrialism. This excessive indulgence of individualism has called forth evils which have led to a decided reaction toward a new assertion of the communal Will. Legislation has found it necessary to drop its former principle of non-interference in the laws relating to child-labor, and to impose restrictions of various kinds in the commercial and industrial spheres. The community has discovered that it must interfere for the individual against the in- dividual in this great modern struggle of individ- uality. In the matter of education, sanitation, protection of many communal interests, the doc- trine of laissez-faire is decidedly set aside. It is worth while to observe that there are cer- tain public questions round which the battle between the communal and the individual Wills specially rages, with victor}^ sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other. This is par- ticularly true of the temperance question, which conn&t settle itself ; or if it does settle itself in any given community (town, city. State), it has usu- ally a tendency to unsettle itself in that same com- munity. Such a result does not spring wholly from the power of the liquor dealer, as is often said, but rather from the uncertainty of the citi- zen, who, not interested in the liquor traffic and not addicted to drink, questions the right of the SOCIETY. 329 communal Will to interfere with the individual Will in enacting the so-called temperance laws. Evidently here lies a borderland not yet decis- ively won by either of the contesting sides. Still, in general, the present tendency is toward a more positive exercise of the communal Will, as the guarantee of a higher freedom. The means of transportation and intercommunication (the railroad, the telegraph and telephone), arc in their nature communal, and in the end will have to reckon with the communal Will in its in- stitutional form ; exactly how, the future must settle. Already street railroads are owned and operated by some cities, and every city is con- sidering the problem. Franchises are no longer to be thrown away or used as a means of corrup- tion. Such is the trend of the time. On the other hand there is not the remotest likelihood of even a partial return to the old Vil- lage Community, though in one way we are going back to communal ownership. Nor is there any probability of a resumption of the land by the community. Indeed all the land of the earth, even that which is still unoccupied, seems destined to pass through the crucible of Individual Owner- ship. And for this a good reason is apparent : the energy of man is called forth in its highest potency by his personal interest; the soil must be his own as well as the fruits of his toil, if he is to do his best. To the untrammeled tenure 330 .SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS. of laud by the individual is doubtless due the brilliant agricultural conquest of North America. And the same thing is happening in other parts of the globe. Evidently the free man is going to possess the soil and not be possessed by it in any shape. There is to be communal ou'nership, but it is realizing itself in a different way from that con- ceived by jNI. de Laveleye and Henry George. Still these men will always be remembered and honored for their services in the general cause of the Community's rights, even if the stream does not run in their channel. Thus the grand movement of Society has com- pleted its cycle, which, however, is not station- ary, but in the perpetual process of development. Manifestly, we have come back to our starting- point which was Positive Society, whose evolu- tion we have just traced, after witnessing its nesrative descent. But this does not mean that the circle is closed and that the movement stops. We reached the point in which the civil Com- munity is calling for a new communal ownership, which is to be established, confirmed and secured bv Law. But who, what makes the law? Here we have the call for the State, the next great secular Institution, whose special function is to secure the free-acting AVill through Law. The social Will in every form must finally invoke the State as its protector, ;is that Institution which (SOCIETY. 331 is to make it actual. Thus Society presupposes the State for its existence on the one hand, and on the other passes over into the State as the next higher form of institutional development. Some Observations on Society. We have now seen that the three fundamental stages in the movement of Society are the Positive or normally existent, the Negative or descending, and the Evolutionary or ascending. We have also seen that they are not stages fixed and separate, but in a continual process with one another, which process is necessarily psychical, being that of the very Self Avliich produces Society. This same order we have already found in the Family. 1. We may now look back and verify the state- ment made at the beginning of the present chap- ter, that Society turns upon tJie willed Product Avith its manifold development and transforma- tion, culminating in the universal middleman (not yet quite universal but rapidly tending thitherwards). This willed Product, becoming more and more complicated, is finally the all- willed Product, which Society is to mediate both in its production and its distribution. With this mediation of the willed Product all the great social conflicts of the time are connected — round it move social revolution as well as social evolu- tion. Its name leads us back to the Will as the source of the social order, whoso scientific dc- \