Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/680

664 and authoritative structure of old societies has tended to support the presupposition that every frontier is an obstacle, a barrier, whereas this is only the negative function even of political frontiers. The deeper we go into the study of the structure and the life of societies, that is to say their statics and their dynamics, the better we are able to understand that the law of the limitation of all collective force, in close correlation with that of differentiation, is the essential condition of all progressive development. It is in fact only by this ever-increasing differentiation and limitation of social forces that the complete adaptation of the human race and its socialization can be accomplished. That which no great empire ever did or ever will be able to accomplish, social groups more and more specialized and limited in their activity and in their organization will succeed in realizing by peace and mutual understanding, by contracts, by treaties, that is, by the limitation and the co-operation of their respective forces. It is on account of not having considered that the modern state, such as it is, issued directly from absolute monarchy and from the French Revolution of 1789, and of not having taken account of the fact that this modern state is simply a historical moment of the structure of European societies, that the theory of international law has scarcely progressed since the seventeenth century, except of late among those of its representatives who, like M. E. Nys, have consented to adopt the historical method, and to put their juridical science in touch with the conditions of the economic existence of societies—conditions which are the basis not only of private law, but of public law as well, both national and international.

The reproach which is legitimate in the present state of sociological knowledge would not be so in the case of the political theorists of Greece. It is not necessary to judge them according to the ideas of our time. This would be unjust, and would also be exposed to grave errors. It is thus that a superficial modern criticism, while demonstrating the falsity of ancient theories which tended to apply to the social order the laws of the family order, and this on the ground that the society was only an enlarged family, has lost sight of the fact that these theories were not absolutely erroneous, but are reminiscences in relation with the