Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 426
4. The Theory of Divine Origin. The importance of the social-contract theory has entitled it to a somewhat elaborate discussion. Of the other fallacious doctrines in question, the two principal ones, the theory of the divine origin of the state and the theory of force, may be more briefly mentioned. The theory of the divine origin, known in familiar form as “the divine right of kings,” may now be regarded as entirely extinct in political theory. It belongs especially to the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Originating after the great mediæval controversy of the Papacy and Empire had subsided, it represents the resistance offered by the constituted monarchical governments to the growing ideas of popular sovereignty. Its essential meaning is that each and every existing state represents an institution of deliberate divine creation. Under this theory the government, or one may say the monarch, since the doctrine was directed towards the defense of the monarchical system, represents a direct divine agency against whom no supposed principle of individual rights can be valid. In a certain sense it is of course very generally held that all human institutions represent the controlling power of the Deity. But the theory of divine right goes much farther than this. It assumes the Deity to have vested political power in a special way, and by special intervention, and to have seen fit to deny political supremacy to the mass of the community. Such works as the “Patriarca” of Sir Robert Filmer, a parasitic apologist of the later Stuarts, reflect the theory in its extreme form, the paternal power vested at the creation in Adam being here supposed to pass by descent to the kings and princes of Europe. The theory as such needs no longer a serious refutation. It has, however, been pointed out by several critics of this doctrine that it has left deep traces in the underlying political thought of European nations. The idea of kingship as having a peculiar divine sanction — the “divinity that doth hedge a king” — is by no means an extinct element in the thought of many people both in Great Britain and continental Europe.
5. The Theory of Force. Finally, we may mention among the erroneous doctrines in explanation of the origin and meaning of the state the theory of force. Here, again, the same theory appears both as a historical interpretation of the rise of the state and as a rational justification of its being. Historically it means that government is the outcome of human aggression, that the beginnings of the state are to be sought in the capture and enslavement of man by man, in the conquest and subjugation of the feebler tribes, and, generally speaking, in the self-seeking domination acquired by superior physical force. The progressive growth from tribe to kingdom, and from kingdom to empire, is but a continuation of the same process. Such a point of view is frequent with the fathers of the church and the theologians of the middle ages, by whom the origins of earthly sovereignty are decried in order that its subordination to the supremacy of the spiritual power may be the more evident. Gregory VII wrote (A. D. 1080), “Which of us is ignorant that kings and lords have had their origin in those who, ignorant of God, by arrogance, rapine, perfidy, slaughter, by every crime with the devil agitating as the prince of the world, have contrived to rule over their fellow men with blind cupidity and intolerable presumption.”
In modern times we see much the same view advanced for a very different purpose in the earlier political writings of Herbert Spencer. “Government,” he says, “is the offspring of evil, bearing about it the marks of its parentage.” With the churchmen the temporal power was defamed for the benefit of the spiritual authorities; with Spencer and the still more extreme writers of the “anarchistic” school, the maintenance of the rights of the individual man is the object pursued. We find the theory of force elaborated in detail by Marx, Engels, and the writers of the German socialistic group. Here the doctrine assumes a slightly different form. The growth of the state is to be attributed to the process of aggressive exploitation, by means of which a part of the community has succeeded in defrauding their fellows of the just reward of their labor. Existing governments represent merely the coercive organization which serves to hold the workers in bondage. The socialist writers have no fault to find with the abstract existence of a state or coercive authority. Their objection is directed against the particular form of the present state, which they ascribe to its iniquitous historical origin. As against the theory of force in general it can with propriety be advanced that it errs in magnifying what has been only one factor in the evolution of society, into the sole controlling force. That government has in part been founded on aggression no one will readily deny. But as we shall presently see, its institution has owed much to forces of an entirely different character. Even a “population of devils,” Kant has said, “would find it to their advantage to establish a coercive state by general consent.”
The force theory has also played some part in political thought, not as a historical account of the rise of the state, but as a means of its justification. Stated in its crudest form, such a doctrine is equivalent to the proposition that might is right. “The individual,” writes Jellinek, in elucidation of this point of view, “must submit himself to it since he perceives it to be an unavoidable force (Naturgewalt).” Bluntschli even maintains that the doctrine has “a residuum of truth, since it makes prominent one element which is indispensable to the state, namely force, and has a certain justification as against the opposed theory (that of contract) which bases the state upon the arbitrary will of individuals, and leads logically to political impotence.” But in plain matter of fact, and apart from the refinements of abstraction, the proposition seems hopelessly illogical. As was long ago pointed out by Rousseau, the right that is conferred by might can reasonably be said to last only as long as the might which confers it. Submission to the state would therefore only be warranted as long as one was unable to do anything else than submit. The amount of justification involved in this is less than nothing.
The theory of force, as a defense of the governmental authority, assumes quite a different aspect at the hands of Ludwig von Haller. Writing at a time when the great wars of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era had overwhelmed the sanguine outlook of the eighteenth century enlightenment in the disillusion of a devastated continent, he represents a natural revulsion from the deification of popular sovereignty towards the principles of monarchical authority. With Haller government is based upon “the natural law that the stronger rules.” But the principle involved is one of benevolence, not of repression. The fundamental bond of human relationship and social cohesion is the dependence of the weak upon the strong. Obedience is given on the one hand, protection on the other. We see this in the relation of parent and child, husband and wife, master and servant. This is the true relation of the prince and the subject. The position is not one created by a voluntary act; it is not a contract; it is a part of the fundamental order of the universe. “We might as well say,” Haller contends, “that there is a contract between a man and the sun, that he will allow himself to be warmed by it.” This universal law of the submission of the weak to the strong is thus made the basis of a theory of absolute monarchy and unlimited submission. Though clothed in a benevolent form it amounts to the assertion that sovereign power is the disposable property of the prince. As such it needs no refutation.
READINGS SUGGESTED
Willoughby, W. W., Nature of the State (1896), chaps. iii, iv, v, vi.
Burgess, J. W., Political Science and Constitutional Law (1898), vol. i, bk. ii, chap. ii.
Rousseau, J. J., Social Contract (1762), bk. i, chaps. i-ix.
Pollock, Sir Frederick, History of the Science of Politics (1900), chap. iii.
FURTHER AUTHORITIES
Hooker, R., Ecclesiastical Polity (1594).
Locke, John, Treatises on Civil Government (1690).
Hobbes, T., Leviathan (1651).
Ritchie, D. G., Darwin and Hegel (1893).
Hume, D., Essays (1741-1742).
Graham, W., English Political Philosophy (1899) (Hobbes, Locke, Burke, p-174).
Lowell, A. L., Essays on Government (No. IV.), 1889.
CHAPTER III. THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THE STATE
1. THE HISTORICAL or Evolutionary View of the State. — 2. The Patriarchal and Matriarchal Theories. — 3. Course of Development: the Aristotelian Cycle. — 4. Military and Economic Factors. — 5. Some General Features of Political Evolution.
1. The Historical or Evolutionary View of the State. The fallacious theories presented in the last chapter may be considered to prepare the way for a more correct estimate of the origin of the state. The view held by the best modern writers may be described as the historical or evolutionary theory of the state. By this is meant that the institution of the state is not to be referred back to any single point of time; it is not the outcome of any single movement or plan. The state is not an invention: it is a growth, an evolution, the result of a gradual process running throughout all the known history of man, and receding into the remote and unknown past. “The proposition that the State is a product of history,” says Professor Burgess, “means that it is a gradual and continuous development of human society out of a grossly imperfect beginning through crude but improving forms of manifestation towards a perfect and universal organization of mankind.” It is thus altogether erroneous to think of man as having in the course of his evolution attained to a full physical and mental development, and then looking about him to consider the advisability of inventing a government. We might as well imagine man, mentally and physically complete, deciding that the time had come for the invention of language, in order to satisfy his growing need of communicating with his fellows. Just as language has been evolved from the uncouth gibberings of animals, so has government had its origins in remote and rudimentary beginnings in prehistoric society. Man’s capacity for associated action and social relationships of all kinds has proceeded by a gradual development parallel with that of his physical and intellectual aptitudes.
2. The Patriarchal and Matriarchal Theories. This general idea or principle of a gradual and progressive evolution seems clear enough. Yet if we attempt to go further and map out the stages of man’s social development, the most serious difficulties are encountered. The simplest and earliest method of offering a historical account of the genesis of social amalgamation was found in taking the family to represent the primal unit of social history. The control exercised by a father over his children, which presently expands into the control of a patriarch over his descendants, was supposed to represent the origin of human government. It indicated at the same time a justification of the state as proceeding from the purely “natural” institution of the family. First a household, then a patriarchal family, then a tribe of persons of kindred descent, and finally a nation, — so runs the social series erected on this basis. This attempt to refer the institution of government to the authority of an original father of a family is known as the patriarchal theory. It has sought to defend itself by reference partly to historical instances, partly to current facts. We find it as early as in the writings of Aristotle, the first book of whose “Politics” contains a statement of the theory. “The family,” says Aristotle, “arises first; . . . when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, then comes into existence the village. . . . When several villages are united in a single community perfect and large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state (πόλις[Greek: polis]) comes into existence.” Since Aristotle’s time the same view has been presented by a variety of writers as offering a valid account of the origins of political institutions. The case of such communities as the nomadic tribes of central Asia is adduced in proof of the correctness of the view.
The historical researches of the nineteenth century, however, have rendered it impossible to accept the patriarchal theory as offering a universal or final solution of the problem of the origin of government. The critics of this theory have conclusively shown, in the first place, that the patriarchal régime has not everywhere appeared as the foundation of later institutions, and, in the second place, that even where it has appeared, it has not of necessity been the oldest form of social regulation which may be traced in prehistoric times. Such has been the substance of the results reached by J. F. McLennan and others who have sought to substitute a rival hypothesis under the title of the matriarchal theory. By this is implied an altogether different social arrangement from that suggested by the supposition of a primitive family. Previous to the patriarchal or family group men are found living in “hordes” or “packs,” in which the usual relations of husband and wife do not exist. Relationship, instead of being traced through the father, is traced in such a primitive society altogether through females. The nature of this relationship may be understood by referring to the account given by Mr. Edward Jenks in his recent “History of Politics.” Mr. Jenks describes as typical of primitive society the arrangement still existent among the natives of Australia and the Malay Archipelago. “It is the custom,” he says, “to speak of the Australian and other savages as living in tribes; ... it would really be better to call it the ‘pack,’ for it more resembles a hunting than a social organization. All its members are entitled to share in the proceeds of the day’s chase, and, quite naturally, they camp and live together ... [but] the real social unit of the Australians is not the ‘tribe’ but the totem group.... The totem group is primarily a body of persons distinguished by the sign of some natural object such as an animal or a tree, who may not intermarry with one another. ‘Snake may not marry Snake. Emu may not marry Emu.’ This is the first rule of savage social organization.... The other side of the rule is equally startling. The savage may not marry within his totem, but he must marry into another totem specially fixed for him. More than this, he not only marries into the specified totem, but he marries the whole of the women of that totem in his own generation.... Of course it must not be supposed that this condition of marital community really exists in practice. As a matter of fact each Australian contents himself with one or two women from his marriage totem.” Under such a system, “as far as there is any recognition of blood relationship at all it is through women and not through men.” Several writers on the matriarchal theory have considered that in this primitive stage of society not only is descent traced through the mother, and property passed in the female line, but the social group is ruled by the women, not the men. Such a condition of things is actually found, for instance, among the Hovas of Madagascar. But as a hypothesis of a universal social arrangement it has been quite refuted.
The exponents of the matriarchal theory — understood here in the narrower sense of a system of relationship and not of female rule — present it as the universal primitive condition of mankind. Out of it, they tell us, the patriarchal system has emerged through the adoption of settled pastoral and agricultural habits in place of the purely wandering or hunting life of primitive man. That such a system of tribal relationship as is here described exists in some savage communities of to-day, and has often existed in the past, seems beyond a doubt. There does not, however, seem any adequate proof for regarding it as the universal and necessary beginning of society. Indeed social history does not seem to lend itself to so simple a formula of successive development. No single form of the primitive family or group can be asserted. Here the matriarchal relationship, and there a patriarchal régime is found to have been the rule, — either of which may perhaps be displaced by the other. Indeed one has to admit the fact that there is no such thing as a “beginning” of human society. All that can be asserted is that in the course of time the monogamic family tended to become the dominant form, though even until to-day it has not altogether supplanted other forms of organization. This does not say, however, that paternal control of the family is to be looked on as the one necessary beginning of government and social control. For it must have happened in many instances that social authority of a rudimentary sort existed where as yet the monogamic family was unknown.
