Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/553

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 537

difficulties of communicating between the opposite slopes. How- ever, this isolation was never more than relative and momentary. As to oceans-, they ceased to be obstacles for the great empires, and finally also the deserts. Neither the circle of deserts and mountains of China, nor its seas, nor its great wall were obstacles either to its development or to its invasion. They were decorations and accessories of the social drama which was, is, and will be always and everywhere the same.

I have devoted a special study to the evolution of China, and I deem it unnecessary to recur to it except to point out that it is in the Chinese civilization that we meet for the first time political beliefs differentiated into a body of sociological doctrines. This fact is all the more remarkable as it coincides, toward the end of the fourth and the beginning of the third century B. C, with the termination of the feudal and the formation of the imperial regime, as a result of the anarchistic and communistic social- ism whose propaganda had characterized the decline of the feudal organization. It was then that Meng-Tsen clearly gave out a theory of frontiers much superior in its positivism to those advanced by the majority of our modern jurists and political metaphysicians, and which is partly in harmony with the views of the writer. The great Chinese philosopher proclaims that the best- governed state will also be the most powerful. Empire will come to coincide with that state which, in its previsions so well verified by history, must soon be substituted for the feudal regime. All the people will come to be incorporated in the state which will be the best. According to him, the best state will be the most peace- ful one. He deduces that the annexation of other kingdoms for the benefit of the one destined to become an empire will be brought about only through the consent of the people. The people will spontaneously ask for their incorporation in order to enjoy the benefits of a model organization. The point of view is certainly very idealistic, but the conception is profound in what concerns the theory of frontiers. It rests in the first place upon the prin- ciple that the power of expansion of every society is adequate to its composition and to its internal organization, and, furthermore, Meng-Tsen sharply opposes peace to war by attributing to the