Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/681

Rh, and in correspondence with the stadia of a civilization whose confusion between the society and the family was a reality. But the family was not such as we see it today, reduced to a small number of members. The modern family was born of society, and not the latter of the family. There were social groups with a domestic structure where parental bonds were one of the elements of the structure which comprised, however, other free men, servants, and children. It is thus, from the positive, historical, and relative point of view, that it is fitting to interpret and to appreciate the theories of Plato and of Aristotle, relating them on the one side to the distributed organization and the primitive classes, and on the other to the Greek city at the time when its framework was falling to the ground in order to give place to a larger structure.

When one understands that the Republic of Plato was not only a Utopia, but an ideal view, many of whose elements were borrowed from a past which could not be reconstructed but many of whose elements also were related to the future, then one will understand the preceptor of Alexander aspiring for imperialism at the same time with equality, and saying that the state ought to bow before the superiority of genius: "To submit itself to this great man and to take him for king during his entire life." Neither Plato nor Aristotle represents any longer the Greek city; their philosophy reflects a social evolution, it is international. Plato will be one of the fathers of the Christian Church, Aristotle the master of Arabian philosophy and of the Catholic Church.