Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/558

 powell] SOCIOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF INSTITUTIONS 499

That which masks the principle of equality in the councils of early nations is the method which grows up in barbarism and becomes thoroughly established in early national society, that guilt or innocence can be established by supernatural methods, and the judgments of the council or tribal court should be con- trolled by supernatural agencies, such as by ordeal ; and when at last a stage of society is reached in which the ruler of the people is also the high priest of its religion, then the principle of equality necessary to the establishment of justice is temporarily overthrown, for the man who can render supernatural judgment has supreme authority. The law of equality in demotic bodies is the law of equality to assert judgments.

Here we note that the equality is not that physical equality which is fundamentally expressed in science, as the law that action and reaction are equal, but it is the equality of opinions of justice in the tribal court which may be resolved into' equality of purpose— one man's purpose in rendering judgment must be equal to another's purpose in rendering judgment. They must be equal because they have the common purpose in rendering a judgment.

We have noted how equality is masked or even everthrown when the ruler becomes a high priest. In modern society, as in the United States, when the authority of the priest is overthrown, equality is more or less masked, although it may exist. Here the body politic is a very large group of people occupying ex- tended regions. The court is no longer the council and the court combined, but special individuals are selected to constitute courts, and individuals are selected to constitute councils. In these councils the members are chosen by equality of votes, and they become representatives of all the people. But the council itself may be composed of two bodies — a senate and a house of representatives. In the house of representatives the council is directly representative of the people by their votes; but the senate is representative of the people in the second degree — it is

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