Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/797

Rh ; not only of communal, but of family, and even of private property, which originally does not imply the right of using and of abusing—a right which subsequently law has subjected to reasonable limitations.

Even in its most absolute form, individual property is but a social function. The two arbitrary theses, which are as wrong as the old controversy between the individual and the state, must be abandoned in favor of the more positive consideration of the constant relation which, in each society, ties the condition of the individual to that of the group, and does not permit us to say whether the whole is superior or inferior to the parts forming it. There is no absolute value, but only relative equivalence. Thus it is in the division of the social functions. The most elementary and common functions are the most necessary; less essential are those which we consider the most elevated. To attempt to establish for them a definitive hierarchic order means to deny the possibility of the mutual evaluation of the social services by a common measure. This mistake is at the bottom of all theories of inequality; but these very theories were created by the almost general conditions of the evolution of human societies. These conditions were military and sprang from inequalities between neighboring societies caused by the difference of their interior development. There existed among the societies a hierarchy, such as existed among the individuals and the groups of individuals in the interior. Even today the jurists of international law proclaim in vain the principle of the equality of all sovereign states. This equality will remain a pure metaphysical conception, always contradicted by the facts. We have powers of first, second, third rank, etc., and the list of their composition, which has ever changed, will always be amenable to revision. The theory which actually proclaims the equality of states does no more correspond to reality than the principle according to which in one and the same society all men possess equal rights or are equal before the law. These are purely juridic, though generous fictions, and in this sense, but only in this sense, they point to new and higher social forms. The positive conditions of peace among individuals as well as societies will never be able to demonstrate